The Journal of One Kenny McCormick
by Seaouryou
Summary: Oh, life. It’s such a tremendous pain in the ass. I'm not too thrilled about death, either. [Kenny’s POV]
1. Wednesday, March 23

So, yesterday was my sixteenth birthday. A landmark! Kyle and Stan gave me food. Cartman gave me nothing. And my parents got me this gay spiral bound journal, the sort that you get for a buck-fifty up at the drug store. But I might as well use it, right? I can practice sketching the female form in the margins.

The party was most enjoyable. Dad let me have some beer. I made out with the bus stop sign. I do not remember this, intoxicated as I was, but Kyle took a picture. My ever-so-caring-and-loving-and-what-would-I-do-without-them friends thought it was hysterical.

Stan actually laughed so hard he threw up. I hadn't known it was possible.

I also, reportedly, tried to rob an 8-10. And failed. Spectacularly. I say 'reportedly,' because Kyle has no pictures. And I know my friends. Can't trust anything they say.

I admit I can see myself trying to rob an 8-10, however. Because they have STRAWBERRY CINNAMON BUNS AND OH MY GOD IT IS THE FOOD OF THE GODS. My life was dark and empty before Strawberry Cinnamon Buns. And now I hunger for them. Constantly.

Passed out on Cartman's front step. He apparently thought I'd died. Don't now HOW he could have come to that conclusion. When I came to, I found that he was trying to sell my body to one of those places where they teach students how to cut up dead people. And Cartman, being the GRAND and TERRIFIC friend he is, didn't try to bash my head in. He then didn't proceed to case me around the place, hollering that he wasn't going to let me screw him out of money.

Long story sort, Cartman killed me, and I spent the rest of my birthday in hell. Damien made me watch _Sex and the City_. Which could have stood to have a lot more sex and a lot less city, let me tell you. Damien kept snuggling up to me no matter how far I scooted over on the couch. I actually fell off the edge of the armrest onto the floor several times. When yet another plight befell the blond ho, Damien cried big fat emo tears and his mascara ran. Then he buried his face into my chest and asked me to hold him.

I swear, if I weren't already dead, I'd have shot myself.

When I came back this morning, I found out Kyle and Stan are fighting. Which means Cartman is now their best friend. WHY, I wonder, do they always pick Cartman as their best friend when they have a fight? My theory is that they subconsciously pick the worst person possible so that they can realize how much they miss each other sooner and get over their sissy little argument. Or maybe, deep down, they actually are nice guys, and don't want to subject me to their constant bitching and whining and moaning.

What are they fighting about, you might ask? A jacket. They share so many clothes, they can't remember who owns this stupid jacket. I swear those guys are one drunken make out away from being boyfriends.

Oh, and Cartman told me that by the time I stopped struggling and expired, my body was so mangled the body-choppers didn't want it. And he says that now I owe him a body. So now Cartman is going to spend all his time trying to kill me. Oh joy.

Glimpsed the love of my life today. Oh, Henrietta, my shapely Goddess. If only you would realize the unbreakable bound we share. She will surely recognize my feelings now that I have crossed the threshold into sixteen-dom.

She put her cigarette out in my eye. It's love! In all capital letters! LOVE, I tell you!

So now I'm going to the hospital. I think I'll meet up with Mole afterward. We'll go scare kids off the playground and steal the swings for our own private use.


	2. Thursday, March 24

All is not right in Kenny-land. A grave injustice has been done to me. Now, there's a lot I can take, but just I can't take this: someone is stealing my porn. They're ripping out pages and taking whole magazines!

YOU DO NOT GET BETWEEN KENNY AND HIS PORN. It is simply not done. What sort of sick bastard would DO this to me?

Right now my prime suspect is Mole, as he is over here the most often in addition to being an incurable klepto. I should've known I couldn't trust a Frenchman. Always sneaking around behind people's backs. I'll search his room the next time I go over there.

Stan and Kyle did the return-each-others'-stuff-when-you-break-up thing today at lunch. Kyle has, apparently, been hoarding Stan's retainer for some inexplicable reason. Then they got all pissy at each other and started yelling.

I asked Cartman why he wasn't making any fag jokes, and he said it was far, FAR to easy. I fear I must agree. Those two are so pathetically gay. Except for the whole fucking other dudes aspect.

I wasn't paying so much attention to them, however, because Bebe had exited the cafeteria and I'd unfurled my "I LOVE BEBE'S TITS" poster. Bebe maced me and stomped on my face while I writhed in pain on the ground in a very manly manner.

Poor girl. She wants me. Too bad for her, my heart belongs to Henrietta.

After school Craig took me down to the 8-10 and bought me a Strawberry Cinnamon Bun. I just about orgasmed on the spot, those things are THAT GOOD. Should have known Craig was just trying to seduce me with food, though. He wants me to help him with his AV project. He wants to do this artistic black-and-white shit. And I couldn't say NO, because he fed me.

God, it NEVER ENDS. Sometimes I think this town would fall apart without me.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Craig, since Cartman's trying to kill me, Stan and Kyle are gay pussies, and Mole is a back stabbing porn thief. We went down to the Pond and chucked stuff at birds and little kids, and Craig carried on a very one-sided conversation about his video project.

Craig is such a fucking nerd.

So now I'm back home, in my room, alone. We only got a quarter-waffle dinner, because Dad's stepbrother and family moved in until they can get back on their feet. My parents tried to get me to share my bed with stepuncle's daughters, but I refused.

Luckily, Annoying Midget She-Beast some call 'little sister' volunteered to share her room. It somewhat disturbs me that my parents appear to advocate incest, however. I mean, sure, he's Dad's STEPbrother, but that's still a level of inbred redneck hick that I'd like to avoid.

Besides, Henrietta is my one and only.

... I've been doodling Filipino chicks in funny hats and nothing else for the past, like, forty minutes. I make no apologies; the Philippines are maxed out on hot chicks. That and Puerto Rico. Oh, Puerto Ricans. In boots. And nothing else. And Italians in sunglasses...

I really hope I'm not developing some sort of clothing fetish. That's the last thing I need right now.


	3. Monday, March 28

Started filming for Craig's video two days ago. Just like I thought, it was a bunch of random black-and-white shit. He spent like two hours filming this empty bedroom and making the curtains on the window blow around with a fan. Then we rented a boat and went out onto Stark's Pond, and he filmed the water swirling around the paddle.

It turns out the 'help' he wanted me to provide was good old-fashioned manuel labor... row the boat, move furniture... or so I thought. After the boat ride we went down to the Tweek coffee shop and Craig bought me an expresso. I should've learned by then that whenever Craig gave me nourishment, it could only end in disaster. He waited until I was nearly done drinking when he mentioned that he wanted me to kiss Clyde on film.

My first response was to nearly choke to death on my coffee. Then I firmly refused. Craig first argued that it was art, which is a load of bullshit because I could glue two soup cans together and call it art. I know, because I am an art student. Gay, I know, but you just can't argue with nude models. Craig's second argument was that it was _Clyde_, the guy who cries whenever we watch war documentaries in history class, so he's _hardly_ a guy. When I still refused, Craig demanded his coffee back.

He actually made me throw it up. Craig is so fucking weird.

So I decided to hang out with someone else for a while. Cartman was still out, because he was still trying to kill me, and Mole was still out, because he'd still committed an unforgivable act against me. So I decided to check in on Kyle. He may be acting like a gay pussy, but between him and Stan, he's the lesser of two evils.

When I dropped by I found him sitting on the couch in his bathrobe, watching daytime TV, eating ice cream out of the carton, and whimpering "You're the only one who understands, Oprah."

This is seriously getting pathetic. He and Stan need to make up soon. And Kyle is supposed to be the _tough_ one - I'd hate to see what Stan's doing right now. Probably leaking angst out of all of his pores. And listening to bad music from the 80s. That's what he does whenever he breaks up with a chick.

I tried hanging out for a while, but Kyle is even more vicious about using the remote than Damien. He kicked me in the stomach every time I tried to change the channel, and he wouldn't share his ice cream.

As Oprah ignited a mob I was suddenly struck with the all-consuming desire to see my porn collection returned to it's complete, un-pilfered glory, so I bid Kyle goodbye and headed over to Mole's. He wasn't home when I arrived, so there was no one to save me when his mother roped me into a long lecture about how glorious God is. Seriously, and some people wonder why Mole hates him so much.

When Mole finally _did_ arrive he quickly assessed the situation, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me up the stairs to the God-free safety of his room. I would have felt charitably toward him, if he hadn't swiped my smut.

We watched a film adaptation of _Les Misérables_, which we do nearly every time I come over because it is Mole's bible, and then he braved the fundamentalist Christianity downstairs to fetch us some refreshments. I immediately started searching his room, as I didn't have much time. And I, of course, started with the underwear drawer. Because that's where pretty much every guy keeps his porn, if it isn't under his bed.

And because I'm just the luckiest son of a bitch in the world, that's when Mole walked back in, trying not to drop any of the junk food he was carrying. He gave me a thoroughly bemused look, and then he asked in that extremely cheesy French accent of his, "Why are you digging through my underwear?"

I had to think on my feet, so I immediately blurted out, "I think the real question is, why do you have pink elephants all over your boxers?"

We both decided that he wouldn't push the issue if I wouldn't, and then we rewound _Les Misérables_ and used it as background noise while I complained to Mole about Craig and his gay little video project. See, this is why I like Mole. He always listens when I bitch. Pretty much everyone else just tunes me out or pretends they can't understand what I'm saying, even though I don't wear a hood anymore.

Mole slept on his bed and I pulled one of his old sleeping bags out of the closet (which is always stuffed full of random stolen crap and I'm always afraid it's going to fall out and crush me to death) and slept on the floor. Mole passed out first, because I'd been chugging flat, caffeinated soda for the past several hours. I searched his room from top to bottom but I didn't find anything, so I decided it had to be in his underwear drawer after all. He _did_ interrupt my search of it. But I'd no sooner opened the drawer then he snorted, turned over, and cracked an eye open at me sleepily.

We were both stared silently for a while, and then he said, "Look, do you just _wanna_ pair?..."

Luckily, he was pretty out of it, so I don't think he actually remembers it happening.

We left his house yesterday afternoon, because his mother was holding a Sunday after-church bible-thumping party, and wandered around town. We ended up at the playground, which is more or less our hang out place, and monopolized that short little merry-go-round thing that you have push to get to spin.

Presently Cartman showed up and offered me a cupcake, which I scarfed down. Then Cartman started to snicker and asked me if I'd liked the frosting. Which, of course, made me halt in my devouring of it (well, actually, I momentarily paused in licking the last of the icing off my fingers) and ask him what he was going on about.

Apparently, he poisoned the icing. You know, there ought to be a LAW about using food against poor people. It's just fucking cruel.

So I was a little pissed off when I got into hell, so when Damien got to gushing and clinging to me like a particularly stereotypical blond chick, I admit that I may have yelled at him.

Damien's bottom lip trembled, and then he slammed his bedroom door and started listening to Evanescence. And quite obviously cried. Which made me feel like a complete asshole.

God, this first week of being sixteen has SUCKED ASS. Those things they tell you about it being a 'sweet sixteen'? ALL LIES. A far better way to describe it would be 'shitty sixteen.' My porn is being threatened, my friends are all lunatics, food has betrayed me, and Henrietta keeps spurning our passion.


	4. Wednesday, March 30

HOLY SHIT CARTMAN AND WENDY ARE DATING.

Well, they went on ONE date. But, seriously, I never thought something like this would happen. I mean, Wendy doesn't have any interest in guys. She is completely purse-sexual. She has a thousand of them and she orgasms all over girls when they have one she wants and I've seen her claw at another girl's eyes when there was a purse sale at the mall.

That's actually how Cartman got her to agree to go out on a date with him. He got her this huge gift certificate for that Purse Expo store in the mall. Apparently, that's what he'd wanted to sell my body for.

Which surprises me. Not that Cartman would try and turn a profit on my chronic dying, but that he would put in so much effort for another person. If Wendy's purse-sexual, then Cartman's definitely self-sexual. I always figured that, if he could, he would run slow-motion down the beach into his own arms.

But, they went on a date. And they didn't rip each other to shreds.

Amazing.

And Stan and Kyle finally made up. Turns out the jacket they were fighting over belongs to Shelly. I knew it was pretty girly. They were hugging and clinging to each other like a couple of chicks, so I decided to inform them of the fact that they were the gayest straight guys to ever live.

Stan agreed readily. Kyle proclaimed that they needed matching shirts to commemorate this fact, because it doesn't get much gayer than matching shirts. Then Stan said a secret handshake was, by far, gayer.

I left when they started discussing dance steps.

Freaks.

So everyone is happy and lovey-dovey and getting their emotional freak on except me. I went down to Raisins to drown my sorrows in Spirit-Coke (try it before you knock it, seriously), and ended up pouring out my Henrietta-angst to my server, Ferrari.

The next thing I know I'm getting hand-raped in a bathroom stall. Quickie handjobs in public places is what I live for. And die for. Turns out misery doesn't love company - misery is just an aphrodisiac, and company can't keep their manicured hands off him.

Mole called me up; wanted to hang out. Naturally, I declined. I STILL haven't found my porn, that sneaky bastard.

God, Mole's not even going to get any use out of it! He's completely asexual. My year is so lonely without Miss November. It was my favorite month. October and December just don't know what to do with themselves when November isn't between them.


	5. Thursday, March 31

So. Turns out I was wrong about Mole stealing my porn. It was actually my little sister.

My little sister. The thirteen-year-old. Stealing MY porn. Dad's stepbrother's wife wanted to be 'helpful,' since they're mooching off of us like a family of leeches and eating our food, so she tried cleaning up. She found the porn (In the underwear drawer! Told you!) while she was picking up Annoying Midget She-Beast's room. I'd ask why she was going through her underwear, but then, this is apparently an incest-friendly family.

Parents are still mildly weirded out, but they'll get over it shortly. I mean, when you're on welfare and your son dies several times a week, it throws things like this into perceptive.

And, of course, the first thing thing that came to my mind when I discovered my little sister dabbles into The Love That Dare Not Speak It's Name was that I owed Mole an apology for acting like an underwear-obsessed freak. So I called him up and he agreed to meet me at our playground, somewhat reluctantly.

I live closer to the park than Mole does, but he was waiting for me by the time I got there, perched on top of the monkey bars and smoking. He didn't offer me a cigarette, which is Mole's Super Subtle Indication that he is Not At All Pleased.

So I told him what was going on, and apologized for suspecting him and rooting through his pink elephant boxers and blowing him off and generally acting like a jackass. Mole smoked quietly for a while and thought this over, then asked me why my dad's stepbrother's wife was going through my little sister's underwear drawer.

I told him my leading suspicion was that she was a sick freak, which he found funny, and then he gave me a cigarette, to my complete and utter relief. And then he told me that, yes, he was a klepto, and yes, he had a chronic urge to steal, but I should know that he wouldn't steal from ME.

We had the following conversation, of which I am paraphrasing so that Mole's exaggerated accent resembles English:

"Because I don't have anything worth stealing, right?"

"No. Because you're my best friend."

Cue my caught-off-guard pause. "I am?"

Mole gave me this funny look. "Of course you are."

Which is true, I guess. Now that I think of it. Because Cartman is a no-way-around-it-asshole, and Stan and Kyle aren't just attached at the hip - they're crawling into each other's clothes. And Mole is pretty much the only person who doesn't pretend all my words are muffled when I talk.

So I guess he's my best friend, too.

We spent the rest of the evening smoking, which was very pleasant and took my mind off Henrietta for a while. I missed dinner. Not that there's anything to really miss.


	6. Friday, April 1

I've suddenly remembered why I hate it so much when Stan and Kyle fight. It's not because they act like huge pussies throughout the fight; it's because they act like fucking NEWLYWEDS when they make up.

So they've gone back to eating each other's food. Stan has always had an impossible-to-explain love for kosher food, and Kyle has always... not. So Kyle happily wolfed down Stan's BLT during lunch while Stan cheerfully dined on Kyle's matzo with schmaltz, which is, as I understand it, chicken fat on cracker-bread.

My attention was drawn from them feeding each other gummy bears (which involves much biting off of heads and pretending the gummy bears are writhing in animalistic, candied pain and oh my God WHY do I hang out with these guys?) to Cartman and Wendy, who were having a very loud, very public breakup. Well, they lasted three days, which is three days longer than I would have expected.

Apparently, Wendy found out Cartman killed me to get her that gift card, and she's not happy about it. And she expressed her unhappiness in a very vocal, colorful manner. Cartman's general position seemed to be that she was an ungrateful ho with implants. Which is, you know, is not a smart thing to bring up. Wendy's really touchy about that subject.

But, the thing is, I really can't stay mad at Cartman for killing me. The guy really has no grasp of wrong or right - he honestly thinks selling my body to get the money to get her a generous gift card to her favorite store was a nice thing to do. So, in his entirely fucked-up head, Wendy is being a completely unreasonable female and is throwing his Nice Thing back in his face for inexplicable reasons.

I have two much more important things to think about than Cartman's severe issues, anyway. The first being Craig. Ever since I refused to kiss Clyde, he's been following me around with his video camera, as if that might improve my chances of randomly falling onto another guy's lips. Having a stalker is a serious pain in the ass.

The other is Damien. Damien is still mad at me, and this is not good in the least. I know I'm kind of... flippant about going to hell, and that's because I'm on such good terms with that emo pussy. I spend all my time in hell in Satan's ocean-view house, watching TV and eating pie. If I die and Damien's still pissed at me, I'd have to mingle with the rest of the damned, whom are usually barred from Satan's residence. And I don't want that.

I really don't want that.

So I'm either going to have to figure out a way to stop dying (HA! HA and HA again!), or make sure I don't end up in hell. At least until this whole thing blows over.

Well, lunch sucked, but the period after lunch is the one I always look forward to anyway: art class. Again, I don't care if art's gay, it beats the fuck out of listening to Clyde bawl during history class, or watching Cartman wheeze during gym class.

And, most importantly, it's the only class I have with Henrietta.

The art teacher is a really big "hippie-bitch", to borrow a phrase from Cartman, and she's permanently high. She always wants us to draw rainbows and flowers and pretty underaged boys banging each other, I assume, since she likes all that other gay shit. Henrietta always turns in these macabre (I am so seriously in love with that word, and Mole is officially ten kinds of awesome for introducing it to me) things that make the art teacher's face twist up, and it really is hilarious to watch.

And Henrietta's art is, like everything about her, perfect.

Right now everyone is busy working on their entries for the Arts and Other Arts Festival the school is holding. It's pretty much going to be a celebration of gayness, but we get the time off class to wander around the gym and look at it, so I guess it all balances out.

Henrietta's working on some sort of sculpture. I'm painting a very detailed scene from hell. I'm even throwing in the park and the strip mall. You know, for an authentic look.

Toward the end of class Henrietta got up to use the sink, so I threw some paint on my pants and hurried over to wash it out - and, naturally, strike up a conversation.

She shot down everyone one of my attempts without even looking up from her clay-caked hands. Temptress. She's so _hot_ when she looks like she doesn't give a fuck about anything or anybody. With means she looks hot all the time.

Tried a different approach: "C'mon, Henrietta. It was because of... _You_ were the reason I got out of that slump and stopped being a goth."

To which she replied: "And now we don't have anything in common anymore, do we?"

Then she went back to her seat.

God. Chicks.

I'm going to use the rest of my evening to spend some quality time with my porn collection. I ended up throwing away those issues Annoying Midget She-Beast stole. There's just something about knowing your little sister used it to get off that taints it.

Update:

Caught Annoying Midget She-Beast digging through my trash can. Decided to do what any good older brother would for his little sister and give her my 2001 issue of _In Too Deep_.


	7. Monday, April 4

When did my life become such a fucking soap opera? I mean, really. It's even got the "Oh you're dead whoops just kidding!" element to it.

So no sooner do Stan and Kyle make up that Wendy decides to prove she's completely over Cartman by hitting on Kyle. Stan has his usual Wendy-induced shit fit, chews Kyle out, blah blah blah, and he storms off to his house only to find Cartman has decided to prove he's completely over Wendy by hitting on Shelly, who's back home since she flunked out of community college.

Suffice to say, it sucks to be Stan right now. Since he's pissed off at Kyle _and_ Cartman he's decided to latch onto my side. And Stan's a good friend of mine, but seriously, he is one of the most whiny people I have ever known. Not nearly as whiny as Damien or Clyde, but still. It can be grating.

I spent the first half of Saturday tuning him out by trying to figure out how to not go to hell. Stan wanted to know why, but I didn't really want to tell him why I didn't want to mingle with the dead, so I just told him Damien was getting on my last nerve.

Stan can sympathize with that. Damien came back up to the surface for a week when we were fourteen. He immediately started tailing Kyle like a puppy, trying to serenade him with tales of how they would rule hell together, and challenging Stan to duels over Kyle's love. Stan finally took him up on it just to get him to stop leaving 'threatening' sticky notes all over his stuff, and Damien ran home crying after Stan flicked him on the forehead.

So then it came to me in a blaze of brilliance: Gary. Mormons all go to heaven! So I hunted him down to where he was working at Tweek Bros. Coffee (which is kinda weird, since he doesn't drink coffee... or tea... or diet, caffeine-free soda) and we hung out with Tweek until Gary's shift ended.

Tweek is frantically trying to figure out how to get out of a drag race. Now I know I'm really one to talk about taste in BFFs, considering Mole steals the salt shakers, napkin dispensers, and artificial sweetener packets whenever we go to a food joint, but Token seriously gets Tweek into some crazy situations.

Tweek asked me what I would do in his situation, and I told him I'd die. Because, well, I would. It didn't comfort Tweek much, though, if the uncontrollable sobbing was any indication.

Gary was overjoyed when I told him I wanted to be a Mormon; of course, Gary is constantly overjoyed. If he were ever just 'joyed' he'd be depressed. We spent the rest of Saturday at a table in the coffee shop, Gary reading to me from the Book of Mormon and Stan tugging on my sleeve and asking if we could leave. I told him _he_ could, but whether he would or not was a whole different story.

Really, if Stan can't stand Gary so much he should just get over his Wendy-fixation and apologize to Kyle for freaking out when it was _Wendy_ who was asking if she could tap _Kyle's_ ass, not the other way around. I don't know when Stan's going to realize that Kyle is as likely to date one of his ex-girlfriends as he is to admit Cartman's been right about Jews all this time. Besides, Kyle has Red. And they seem rather sickeningly happy together. She's always wearing his ushanka.

I actually asked Stan, when five o'clock hit and Gary had to go home for his family get-together or whatever, why he was making such a big fucking deal over Wendy hitting on a completely unreceptive Kyle and hadn't said anything when Wendy and Cartman went on a date. Stan said, "That's just Cartman. If he weren't a self-serving asshole, we'd know something was wrong."

Which is true, though I hate to admit it.

On Sunday I went to see Gary again, Stan still tagging along. Mole met up with us, too, because he always avoids his house on Sunday if he can. Otherwise his parents drag him to church.

When Gary started explaining what I had to do to become a Mormon, Mole paused in his chain-smoking long enough to inform me of the very pressing fact that all my friends are beetches. Which is, of course, French for 'bitches.' I asked him if that included himself, and he hit me upside the head with his shovel and went back to smoking, offering some mumbled blasphemy in place of an apology for the near-concussion.

I swear the only reason he still drags that shovel around with himself is so that he can wail on me with it.

Gary says that before I can become a Mormon I have to meet with official missionaries and have a bunch formal 'discussions' about Mormon beliefs about God, Jesus, the Mormon's take on the purpose of life, and the 'Plan of Salvation,' and I have to agree to live by various church precepts. I have to read from the Book of Mormon and the Bible, pray to God to ask if the Mormons' teaching are true, and attend Sunday religious meetings at least twice before I can be converted. Then I have to have an interview with a local religious leader and get baptized before I can join the church.

The whole thing takes weeks, which I really don't have. It's already been six days since I last died, so I know I'm due. Maybe there's some sort of express route to Mormonism I can take, or something.

Stan sat around the coffee house and made discontented noises the entire time. I know he doesn't like Gary OR Mole, but he couldn't go home because Cartman was there, showering Shelly with chocolate and flowers and singing her an off-key love song he wrote himself while playing a guitar. Badly. Stan's annoyed noises were nearly as aggravating as Craig, who was sitting two tables away and very blatantly filming me while trying to hide behind a ficus. He would have been more inconspicuous if he hadn't loudly called Tweek over every twenty minutes to refill his coffee.

When Gary left at five again and Mole decided to brave his household, Stan and I started to walk back toward our houses. We live next door to each other, after all. Stan started complaining that he had no idea how converting to Mormonism was supposed to keep me away from Damien, and he didn't believe me when I told him Mormons go to heaven. He still thinks Joseph Smith was full of shit.

I said, "Stan, are you _seriously_ going to argue with _me_ about the afterlife?"

And he said, "Look, I'm not going to pretend I understand everything that goes on in your life - and death - but people should make religious decisions based on _faith_, not because they want to piss off their parents or they like the robes or they're on death row or some shit like that. I'm just worried you're trying to conform to some group just to run away from a problem, like when you were a goth three years back."

And I didn't say anything, cause, I mean, shit. Why does Stanley Fucking Marsh have to be _so right_, _so often?_

So then Stan said, "Let's go down to 8-10. I'll buy you a strawberry cinnamon bun for dinner. You must be getting tired of waffles."

... You know, Stan complains a lot, and he's sort of a wuss, and he's used to making moral judgments and then trying to get everyone else in the world to conform to his way of thinking. But he really is one of the best things to ever come out of this fucked up little town.


	8. Wednesday, April 6

Getting stalked drives you fucking crazy, and Craig had been doing it for over a week. So it's understandable that I experienced a temporary loss of sanity, grabbed Clyde, and kissed him just to get Craig to stop following me around.

And let me tell you, kissing another dude is nothing like kissing a chick. In fact, it's rather repulsive, and I threw up in my mouth a little. And then Craig started his victory dance... well, the only good thing about the entire experience were the looks on Gary and Stan's faces. Mole was completely disinterested, as he always is when it comes to anything remotely sexual.

After school Mom made me take my little sister to some gay pride rally so that she could try and pick up girls. I only agreed because I thought a little lesbian action might cheer me up. The entire ride over the Annoying Midget She-Beast complained about having to always wear hand-me-downs; she whined about the blood stains on my old parka in particular.

We mingled in the crowd for a while and bemoaned the lack of hot lesbians at hand, and then I ran into none other than Bebe Stevens. She looked about as surprised to see me as I was to see her, and then she smirked this smug, catty smirk and asked where my love-bunny Clyde was.

I informed her that I was helping my little sister scope out chicks, which was allowing us to bond in new and frightening ways, and then I asked her what _she_ was doing there. I may or may not have implied she was an ultra-feminist man-hating prude dyke. Bebe scowled at me and told me she was looking for her mother.

So Bebe won that particular frank exchange of ideas.

Annoying Midget She-Beast salivated when she watched Bebe walk off, and I told her to forget about Bebe. That girl is an unrivaled prude. Annoying Midget She-Beast tested my patience by saying that just because I couldn't score with her didn't mean she was a prude - she could just be gay.

We stayed at the rally a little longer, but then the midget got all pissed off when I told Porschea off for hitting on her. Look, I'm not about to apologize for protecting my baby sister from a seventeen-year-old inbred hick who maliciously killed the few brain cells she was born with by drowning them in hairspray. This is an older brother's _job_. Besides, I'm pretty sure she has gonorrhea.

When we piled into the truck the midget announced she wanted to go down to the graveyard, and since I'd ruined her chances with Porschea I either owed her some of my porn or a day as her chauffeur. I'm already running depressingly low on porn, so I drove her down there.

My family usually doesn't get my body when I die. Hell, I usually come back before they even know I'm missing. When they _do_ they usually cremate me or leave me on the curb for the trash collectors. My earliest memory is actually of my mom getting into a fight with this garbage man over if it was against the union to remove bodies.

My family purchased this plot of land in the graveyard, though, back when it became very apparent my dying was going to be a regular occurrence, and there're five graves on it now. One was from when I spontaneously combusted, one was from when I got turned into a zombie, one was from when I stayed dead for a few months, and one was from when Cartman tried to train attack dogs.

You know, I've always been pretty impartial to graveyards in general. They don't depress me; they really don't do anything for me at all. My little sister is the one who's obsessed with that macabre stuff. She's always spouting these obscure little facts and telling me there aren't any laws regarding what you can and can't do with cremated remains, so you could mix someone's ashes into some cement and pave your driveway, if you wanted.

I swear my little sister conditioned me for life as a goth. Actually, after Stan burned them, they got really 'selective' over who they'd let into their group. If Henrietta hadn't swung for me, I wouldn't have gotten in.

We moved from her bedroom out here to my graves. Sitting on slabs of stone in the snow in the dark was supposed to properly illustrate how horrible life is, or something. We wrote graffiti and bad angsty poetry all over the tombstones and sometimes Jason's mom would bring us cookies.

I know it's really pathetic, but I kind of miss that feeling of camaraderie.

I'm was reading some of the poetry when my little sister wandered up, made loud, depressed-sighing sounds and said, "I wish people wouldn't vandalize graves like this. It's so disrespectful of the dead."

I said, "Hey, I did most of the vandalizing."

And she said, "I'm just saying I wish you wouldn't." She got all depressingly-preteen-girl-quiet for a while, then she cheerfully told me was going to go look for new graves, try and guess what the people had died of, then check the obituaries when we got home to see if she'd been right. And then she skipped off.

My four graves really are sort of rundown, but no one actually visits them. And then there's the fifth grave, which is the one my little sister wanted to come for, and in fact the only grave that anyone in my large, inbred family would want to come for.

Kevin was always such a sickeningly perfect older brother. I remember at his funeral no one was really crying. They were all _sad_, I mean, but they weren't sobbing their eyes out, and when we left the church and climbed back in the truck to go home, Mom said it would be okay because they all could be reassured that he was in a better place now. And she looked right at me when she said it.

And, really, what was I supposed to say? "No, Mom, actually he's burning in eternal hellfire, just like I would if I weren't the son of Satan's only friend, just like everyone in this town is going to do eventually." I'm not enough of an asshole to make my mom cry. Letting them think Kevin's in heaven isn't going to hurt them in the least.

On the ride back home Annoying Midget She-Beast chatted on happily about terminal cancer, and when we pulled up in the driveway she told me that the next time I died I had to tell Kevin she had found love in the bodice of that girl with the fizzy blond hair and big rack, whatever her name was. I told her I didn't think she was using the right word, and she happily told me to fuck myself and flounced off to find a newspaper.

It's kind of funny, you know, ironic, that the family with the kid that chronically dies probably has a more misinformed view of the afterlife than anyone else in town.


	9. Friday, April 8

Yesterday Red yelled at Stan to make up with Kyle, because she said she didn't want her boyfriend pining after anyone that wasn't her. So she dragged Kyle over to where we were sitting and Stan and Kyle talked, then started yelling, then got into a slap fight. Stan eventually pinned Kyle down and declared victory, and then he let out this girlie little yip. He and Kyle had the following exchange:

"You bit me!"

"You're sitting on me!"

"Dude, you don't just... bite people!"

"My insides are in danger of being irreversibly squashed!"

Kyle chewed on Stan's arm for the rest of lunch and Stan pinched Kyle's stomach, and when the bell rang to get to class they hauled each other to their feet, employed their brand new secret handshake, and declared the matter settled.

I don't know how such gayness got wasted on straight guys, but whatever. Now Stan will stop following me around and sighing loudly whenever Gary explains something about Mormonism. And stop complaining when Mole steals his calculator and uses a-lock to write clever messages on it that made Stan sputter with either embarrassment or indignant rage.

Then at lunch today Cartman marched up to Kyle, looking like Kyle'd just banged his mom. I'd thought Cartman had already thought up and called Kyle every variation of the term "faggy Jew" under the sun, but apparently rage brings out his creative side. He'd no sooner stomped off than Wendy approached them and told Stan Shelly was twenty-seven kinds of a slut.

After lunch we had the Arts and Other Arts Festival and, you know, I really should have made the connection between the festival and Craig's stupid video project. He set it up on this huge projector and played the video in a loop. And he clipped the video together so that it looks like this huge, elaborate, black-and-white gay love story between me and Clyde.

I knew Craig was stalking me (he wasn't particularly subtle about it, after all), but I'd had no idea he'd been crawling into my bedroom at night to film me while I was asleep. And the thing is, I usually sleep in the buff. And it's not like most of the school hasn't seen it already, or that I've got anything to be ashamed of, but I thought it was considered a common courtesy to _ask_ a guy before you plaster his dick across the school.

So most of the student body flocked to Craig's film and neglected the rest of the art festival, but I wandered around to look at what everyone else had done. Henrietta's sculpture looked fantastic. I'm not use what it was suppose to be, exactly, but there was a lot of barbed wire in it and she pasted newspaper clipping about car crashes and murders to it.

I was rather pleased with how my scene of hell turned out except, as Mole pointed out, I forgot that the trees were blooming down there at this time of year. I was standing there, thinking about how I would touch it up when the festival was over and I could take the painting home, when Bebe wandered up. She made this face at me and called me a perverse exhibitionist. I'm guessing she saw Craig's film.

I could have protested my innocence, but there really wasn't a point. If there are two things Bebe Stevens hates in this world, it's her big rack and me, because I always call attention to her big rack. Personally I think she needs to tone the self-hatred down, because that mace she carries around fucking _burns_. And wherever she took her self-defense lessons, they seem to have forgotten to teach their students the difference between a sexual predator and an average sixteen-year-old boy.

So instead I just called her a prude and asked her what she wanted. She said - with that same look on her face - that she had hunted me down to tell me our english was making her tutor me.

Then her eyes drifted over to my painting and she asked, with a bit of surprised look, if I'd painting it. I said yes, and pointed out my signature in the bottom corner as well as the big fucking plaque next to it. She said I didn't have to get sarcastic and asked why I was painting a strip mall; I told her it was hell.

Her eyes got all wide and she said "What?" in this startled tone.

I said, "It's hell."

Bebe gave me this unnerved look and said, "I thought you went to heaven."

I cracked up, and then Tweek came barreling through the gym in a car. I can only assume the drag race didn't go well. He smashed into my painting, completely mangling the canvas. He destroyed Henrietta's sculpture as well as a few others, and then he finally plowed into Craig's projector, crushing the tape.

Bebe went running to the car to make sure Tweek was okay, and I just kept laughing, because it was _funny_.

I'm the last person who deserves to go to heaven.


	10. Monday, April 11

Stan and Kyle got together and apparently decided the Clyde thing had depressed me horribly, so they took me out on Sunday to 'cheer me up.' I know they mean well - they _always_ mean well, it's infuriating - but things are actually going my way for once.

When Tweek demolished the projector, Craig came running over and chewed him out while he crawled out of the wreckage with Bebe's assistance. Then Token swooped in out of nowhere and came to Tweek's defense, because that's just what he does. Craig and Token got into a fight and, well... Craig spends all of his free time in dark movie theaters, hiding from the sun and muscle-building activities. And Token is black.

So while I hung back, watching Token beat Craig up and Bebe help a frantic Tweek get his helmet off his head, Henrietta wandered over. It was the first time _she'd_ come up to _me_ in two years, so I'd been a little flustered and hadn't been as suave with her as I would have liked.

I offered my sympathies that her sculpture had been destroyed, but she'd just blown a smoke ring and said, "My sculpture represented life. Destroying it was a fitting end."

Then she commented that she'd seen Craig's project before Tweek plowed into it, and that kissing another boy was very anti-conformist, and that maybe she'd been wrong about me after all.

So kissing Clyde was completely worth it, even though it was totally disgusting and I'm never kissing another dude again as long as I live. Er. Well, you know what I mean. And I don't need any cheering up, because Craig's got a bloody lip, his camera is broken, and Henrietta is finally speaking to me again. But Stan and Kyle apparently can't get that through their heads.

They kidnapped me while I was walking back from church with Gary and his family (Whose sister is totally smoking, by the way. It's too bad she doesn't believe in premarital sex.) and dragged me off to Tweek Bros. Coffee, where they mocked modern poetry. Henrietta, Jason, Brandon, and Andrew were there - I guess Benny's finally kicked them out. Stan and Kyle wouldn't let me go talk to them, though. Kyle sat on my legs so that I couldn't stand up, in fact. They said the goth kids were enablers. And, okay, they _are_, but I like them.

It's sort of a depressing thought, but I don't think I actually have anything in common with Stan and Kyle, aside from history. They're so, I dunno... happy. They always want to talk about their feelings and learn life lessons and gay shit like that. They're pretty oblivious, too. Careless with all their caring, I guess. They weren't there for me when I was _really_ down. No one was, except Henrietta.

Mrs. Tweek finally kicked them out for causing a disturbance during poetry hour, and they dragged me down to the 8-10 instead. They went to the back and shot straw wrappers at each other while I headed for the pastry shelf. They were out of Strawberry Cinnamon Buns (it pains me to write that sentence) so I got a doughnut. One of those powdered sugar ones that make you look like a crack addict if you eat it. I'd hardly paid for it when Stan and Kyle got kicked out again, this time for wasting straws.

They finally dragged me down to the bookstore, where Kyle declared that all American literature from _To Kill a Mocking Bird_ to _Gone With the Wind_ as 'dead to me.' Stan shifted through the turned-into-a-movie section and said the movie version of _Forest Gump_ had had a stronger message. I'd always preferred the book, myself. I always felt it was more realistic that he didn't end up with Jenny.

I don't really read much anymore. I used to be into Poe and Tim O'Brien, but Mom asked me to stop bringing home books about death when Kevin died. Henrietta, Jason, Brandon, and Andrew are all sort of obsessed with Poe, so I lent them my books and when I left the group I just sort of... gave up on that kind of thing.

Mole keeps trying to push Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Grant Naylor on me, though. He says British humor is the only worthwhile humor.

The three of us meandered over the Harlequin section, where Stan and Kyle immediately began snickering. The covers nearly had Stan prone on the floor, crippled by laughter, and Kyle commented that all Harlequin writers probably chose their titles with a random generator that combined the words 'throbbing,' 'passion,' 'hot,' and some male archetype. He pulled out _The Throbbing Passion of the Cowboy in the Hot Prairie Night_ to prove his point, and he and Stan giggled like eight-year-olds.

I was kind of annoyed, because Harlequin novels _were_ my masturbation material before I was old enough to get my hands on any _good_ porn. I used to get off to 'the wanton mistress's ample, heaving bodice...' Kyle is convinced that they're all like _Valley of the Penises_, though.

Kyle finally dragged himself away from Stan to ask me if I was feeling any better, and I asked him why they were so sure I _needed_ cheering up. He said some stuff about perpetuating rumors, blah blah blah, and then he said people were going to talk because I already spent so much time with that queer kid, Chris.

So I said, "Hold up. Mole isn't gay."

Kyle gave me this look like _I_ was the oblivious, naive one who always got suckered into magicians and psychics and talking whales and pointed out that Mole didn't like girls. And I said, well, yeah, but he doesn't like _guys_, either.

Then Stan knocked over the new paperback display, and he and Kyle got kicked out _again_. I hung back and watched that security-guard/cop-for-hire spray them in the face with pepper spray and tell them to 'move along, sirs.' Kyle and Stan don't usually get kicked out of three places in one day. I guess they're making up the time they lost when they were having their bitchfest.

It's sort of aggravating that Stan drops me the moment he and Kyle make up, then turns around, decides I'm depressed, and tries to cheer me up. I can't say it _really_ bothers me that he'd rather hang out with other people than me, though - I'd rather hang out with other people than him.

I wandered around and stumbled across none other than Mole, hogging the couch in the children's section from the snot-nosed five-year-olds (all of which were standing back and watching him all a group of resentful vultures) and reading _Through the Looking-Glass_. He was raving about it last week, in between writing vulgar suggestions on Stan's calculator and calling him a honky. He was going on about "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in particular, and saying it was a poem about the evils of religion.

Mole can make even the most mundane things into an anti-religious statement. It's like a very useless superpower.

I made him move his boots off so that I could sit down, and then I asked him what he was doing in the bookstore. He said he'd skipped out on church again and now he was hiding from his parents, who were searching the graveyard for him, where they were convinced he was sacrificing cats on fresh graves with the rest of the occult.

People - Mole's parents in particular, but it's everyone, really - have a bad opinion of him. Even I did; up until two years ago he was just that weird kid who carried around a shovel and beat Craig's office record because he was always trying to make off with a desk. But whenever we hang out, it's always at the playground or Tweek Bros. Coffee or his house. The worst thing we do together is smoke cigarettes outside the Museum of Tolerance and laugh when that shrew woman who works (practically lives) there has a conniption.

I lounged on the couch for a while and Mole read me "Jabberwocky," and then one of the more bitter snot-nosed five-year-olds tipped a display over on me. It crushed me and killed me quite efficiently, and I wound up in heaven even though I haven't officially converted yet. I guess intentions really do count in the afterlife.

I came back this morning and missed first period - english. The same subject Bebe-the-prude-Stevens is coming over to tutor me in in, oh, about an hour. I guess I should clean up my room or something.


	11. April 11, Later

Mole's eyebrows are really thick.

I mean they're, like, REALLY thick. They look like caterpillars. It looks like he brutally murdered two caterpillars and then desecrated their corpses by stapled them to his forehead.

I came to this revelation while Bebe was trying to tutor me. She got really pissed off that I was doodling a picture of Mole going on a caterpillar killing spree of unrivaled carnage instead of going over this week's vocabulary list for _The Catcher in the Rye_. And then she nearly ripped out some of her poodle hair when I told her I hadn't been reading the book.

Yeah, poodle hair. I finally decided _that's_ why I thought all her fizzy hair looked so familiar. I had this epiphany while she was trying to get me to dissect "O Captain! My Captain!" And it totally fits, because I can just imagine her as this tiny, high-strung dog.

I'll avoid the obvious pun.

Seriously, Bebe was acting like a bitch (OOPS HOW COULD THAT HAVE SLIPPED OUT?) from the moment she walked in the front door. She took this horrified look around the living room when she came in, looking like she'd just stepped into the center of Hooverville. I don't know why she was acting so shocked - everyone knows Cartman is the token fat kid, Kyle is the token Jewish kid, and I'm the token poor kid. Or maybe Bebe's perception of 'poor' was 'can't buy a new Lexus every year.' I KNOW her dad's fucking loaded, and her mom's a damn trophy wife.

Then one of Dad's stepbrother's sons (Yeah, they STILL haven't moved out. It's been nearly three weeks. 'Temporary situation until we get back on our feet' my ass.) came right up and hit on her. The way she freaked out, you'd have thought he licked her on the face and ripped off his pants.

Can't say I'm sorry she punched him in the face, though. I'm tired of these people lounging around my house and eating my waffles. They aren't even blood relations, but the chicks are still related enough that the thought of nailing them creeps me out. Which is really bringing me down, because they wander around the house in their nighties at night, and I haven't gotten any since Ferrari gave me a hand job. And that was more than two weeks ago.

I suggested we study in my room, so that more distant family members couldn't infringe on her honor, and she gave me this utterly offended look and told me she was here to _tutor_ me.

So I told her not to flatter herself. I mean, sure, she has a sweet rack - the sweetest, even - and I've always been a boob man, but I don't fuck virgins. They have no idea what they're doing, and then they get really clingy afterward. Besides, I'd fear that in the middle of it her hair would come alive and swallow me whole.

Bebe tried to sucker punch me the way she'd punched my... wait, what do you call the son of your dad's stepbrother, anyway? A stepcousin? Anyway, I dodged the blow, and we decided to sit at the kitchen table.

My little sister promptly appeared, wearing the shortest skirt she had (she shoplifted it from Stupid Spoiled Whore), welcomed Bebe to our humble home, and asked her if she would like a cool beverage. Bebe said yes, and then blinked for a while when the Annoying Midget She-Beast got it for her. Serious, it almost looked like she was having an epileptic fit. Then she hesitantly thanked her for the water.

I told the little sis to scram, which she did, flouncing off in a way that showed off her ass. Then I glared a bit at Bebe. I know it's sort of a stupid thing to get pissed off about, but it was fucking annoying that she was acting like it was some sort of news flash that the McCormicks were dirt poor.

I told her rather snidely that if water was too good for her she could duke it out with my stepcousins over the last bottle of vodka. Bebe frowned at me, set down her chipped glass, and I expected some sort of retort, perhaps of a physical nature, so I was a tad thrown when she... apologized.

"Look, there's a difference between _knowing_ something intellectually and actually realizing it, okay?" So I was right. Bebe's so set in her happy rich bubbly that poor means 'wears torn clothes' to her.

Bitch.

Then she commented that I didn't look much like the rest of my family. I guess she was trying to make small talk, or something. And, really, it's true - my stepcousins, of course I don't look like them, but I actually don't look like my sister much at all. I didn't look like Kevin, either. They both take after my dad a lot.

Actually, I'm the only blond in my entire known family. EVERYONE has the same dirty-brown hair color that Dad has. Except Mom, of course. I'd always figured I was the illegitimate son of our mailman, or maybe the butcher.

Bebe got this distasteful look on her face again and said that wasn't funny. And I said, who was joking?

Then she got that same look on her face she'd gotten when I told her I don't go to heaven. It's actually kind of fun destroying her Barbie girl delusions.

Bebe suggested we get started on the tutoring session, and then I started tuning her out and coming up with logical explanations for Mole's thick eyebrows.

After she'd finished tearing at her hair, she'd shouted it was no wonder I was flunking english, if I never did the assigned reading. Then she'd demanded to know _why_ I wasn't doing the reading, and I'd just shrugged and said it was too gay to bother. My goth phase pretty much sucked out all interest I ever had in reading, after all. Maybe I would have been different if I'd been able to drop in on Poe in hell, but like I said, the only person I ever see when I'm there is Damien.

Bebe said there was no way she could tutor me if I didn't _read the book_, then she picked up her things and stomped out. I think she just wanted an excuse to leave a place where people prop up a corner of their coffee table with a cinder block. Annoying Midget She-Beast ran into her on her way out, in such a way that she fell on top of her, she apologized profusely as she helped Bebe back to her feet, and brushed the dirt off Bebe's ass.

I gotta say, my little sister's pretty smooth. As soon as Bebe was out the door she came over and socked me really hard in the shoulder, though. I clutched my shoulder and said, "Ow! What the fuck was that for?"

"How could you not tell me Becky was coming over?" she demanded, outraged.

"Her name is Bebe."

"Whatever!" she cried, waving a hand dramactically. "You'd better not scare her off the next time she comes over! I'm not going to let you ruin my chances with Bethany!" And then she stomped off.


	12. Wednesday, April 13

I had that dream about Kevin's accident again, that same one I used to have all the time. I was laying in bed, wondering what had brought it on, when I realized today is the third anniversary of the night he died.

It got me thinking about Jason, Brandon, Andrew - or Dante, Damien, and Atticus, if you're calling them by their goth handles - and Henrietta. When I was a goth, they'd called me "Raven." I found out from Stan later that they'd called him the same thing.

Stan was sort of an asshole when I turned goth. He, Kyle, and Cartman decided to just ignore me until I "got over it." I know we did the same thing with Stan, but God damn it, at least we _tried_ before we gave up on him. Stan... just doesn't _get_ it. Death. He's got a pretty warped view of it, since he's watched me die for the past sixteen years and his grandfather keeps asking people to kill him. And he was a goth for, what, two weeks? He never even found out _why_ they were goth. So Stan's opinion of goths is sort of grating.

Jason - Dante - invited me over to his house to show me how to dye my hair. He didn't do a very good job, because the roots were always showing. While I was there I noticed that his house was pretty small and run down. A lot nicer than my shithole of a home, but still. I found out later that Jason has really bad pneumonia, and was in and out of hospitals for the first ten years of his life. His parents spent a lot on his treatment, so he didn't have much money. And he's a big closet case on top of it all.

I could never take Brandon seriously because he was called "Damien," and the Damien I know worships Martha Stewart and can't wait until she chokes on a pretzel or otherwise expires in some way so that he can make potpourri and Christmas ornaments and embroidery with her. His parents got divorced when he was seven, after years of screaming obscenities at one another. There was no club house or bear trap to bring them back together, either.

We went over to Brandon's house a few times because his father happened to be a chain smoker and there were always packets of cigarettes lying around. About half the things Brandon's dad said were creative renditions of "My ex-wife is a bitch." Brandon's about a year older than Henrietta and Jason, and unsurprisingly a misogynist.

Andrew's favorite book is _To Kill a Mocking Bird_, which is why he wants to be called Atticus. He's the youngest, not only with the goths, but in his family. He's got three incredibly successful older brothers, but he just doesn't seem to be _good_ at anything. Andrew has a tendency to be ignored. It's like a birth defect, almost.

So I was thinking about them and Henrietta, mostly, but then, when _aren't_ I thinking about Henrietta? Henrietta wasn't sick and her parents didn't hate each other and she wasn't ignored. Her parents always did whatever she wanted; she wanted to be called Henrietta, they called her Henrietta. I don't know why she's a goth, actually. I don't even know her real name.

I threw on some clothes and got out of bed, and I could tell right away it was Kevin's anniversary. Mom and Dad were all quiet and the annoying sister-creature was spouting off more of her death statistics. The only nice thing about the house was that Dad's stepbrother and his family had finally moved out.

I quickly left - I don't want to watch Mom sigh and stare out the window while she washes dishes, and I REALLY don't want to hear how many people die from squirrel attacks every year - and met up with Mole and his possibly sentient eyebrows.

He was in one of his moods. When he rants and rants and rants about politicians and God and how both are buttfucking sons of beetches. I'm guessing he was watching the morning news reports again. I told him that stuff fucks with his brain, but he doesn't listen.

Kyle says that Mole used to be like that 24/7, but I don't really trust that much, because Kyle has probably spent a total of two hours around Mole in his entire life. I do know that he got less vocal when he had to give up his mercenary work, though. His kleptomania was just interfering with the missions too much - plus, high school homework. You can't take a workload like that lightly.

It was drizzling a little - not real _rain_, more like a heavy fog It was enough to keep the kids off of the playground, though, so we didn't have to scare them off the swings. I sat there and rocked back and forth while Mole ranted and complained that it was too damp to smoke, and I thought about Henrietta some more. It was sort of depressing me that I knew next to nothing about her, when I'd told her so much about _me_. Not that I'd told her everything - only Mole knew everything, and that was only because it had just all poured out when he found me.

Eventually Mole's rant subsided and he elbowed me in the ribs. I'd been kicking the damp tanbark around, staring at my shoes, and when I looked up Bebe was standing in front of us with her hands on her hips.

"Kenny," she said, "you have to make Cartman stop being an asshole and get back together with Wendy."

Which was laughable in of itself, because making Cartman stop being an asshole would be like making Stan and Kyle stop acting like gay lovers. I asked her why she'd want her best friend involved with someone like Cartman, anyway, and she said Wendy had been moping ever since they broke up. Apparently Bebe had tried taking her purse shopping yesterday and she'd been unenthusiastic, which was the emotional equivalent of coughing up blood or something.

I asked her what was in it for me, and she said (like it was this tremendous chore) that she would tutor me again. I pointed out that I didn't WANT to be tutored, and she growled and stomped off, but not before yelling over her shoulder that only the creepiest of guys hung out at playgrounds.

I commented about how the humidity turned Bebe's already-fizzy hair into a particularly fearsome thing, like a giant Tribble was munching on her head. Mole, who was chewing on the end of an unlit cigarette, muttered that Bebe wasn't that bad.

Which is kind of surprising, because Mole thinks just about everyone is "that bad."

I asked him if we were creepy, and he said, "Embrace eet."


	13. April 13, Later

When I came back from the playground, Mom and Dad were still moping. Little sister had moved on to describing famous ten-car pileups, and neither of them had the energy to tell her to shut up.

I would have left the house again, but it had started to really pour. That's why I'd left the playground in the first place, after all. I would have gone home with Mole, but his anti-God rants always increase in intensity the closer he gets to his God-obsessed parents.

So I locked myself in my room and bounced a ball off the wall until it hit my lamp, successfully breaking the bulb and puncturing the ball. This is precisely why all my stuff is shitty.

I was so bored that I dug out my school-issued copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_. The book was just as gay as I'd predicted it would be. The guy just wanders around. He doesn't even accomplish anything. What sort of shitty story telling is that?

It was pretty late by the time I finished the Book of Colossal Gay, so I stared at one of my walls until I fell asleep.

Ya'know, I think I should paint it. The odds are slightly better that a car won't smash into my bedroom wall.


	14. Thursday, April 14

I woke up knowing today was going to be a better day. Mom actually made something besides waffles for breakfast - scrambled eggs, so it wasn't a delicacy or anything, but I was pretty fucking sick of waffles.

I decided to skip school, since I didn't want to deal with english or Bebe. The art teacher keeps the paint cabinet locked - I think that's where she stashes her weed - so if I want to paint that wall in my room I have to buy the paint instead of stealing it from the school.

I have understandably limited funds, so after much mental anguish, I cleaned out my porn fund and headed down to True Value. True Value is on its way to being the town's super store, the way Jim's Drugs did after we all stopped shopping at Wallmart.

And, you know, looking back, I really wish I'd gotten onboard with Cartman on that one. A turkey sandwich and a liter of coke for a buck would be a really sweet deal. Knew I shouldn't have listened to the son of a lawyer.

But True Value's prices are pretty low, so I headed down there. Turns out lead-based paint is cheaper because it's deadlier or something. I'd say everything is equally deadly to me, so I went for it.

I was going to head straight home and get started, as my parents don't really give a shit if I'm in school or not, but I saw Henrietta smoking outside the store and it drove it straight out of my mind. We hung out, i.e., we stood and smoked in silence. After a while I asked her why they'd moved from Benny's to Tweek Bros. Coffee. Turns out Jason has a crush on Tweek and is trying to convince him that his dependence on coffee is evidence of inherent gothability.

Sort of pissed me off, because I essentially got kicked out of the group for my own infatuation with the lovely Henrietta, as love was deemed 'ungothlike.' But Jason's allowed all the squishy feelings he likes, just because being queer is nonconformist. I'd say the opposite is true in this town, considering the man orgies South Park is subjected to on occasion, but it's hard to argue with someone as hot as Henrietta.

I think their love-ban is more for convenience than gothdom, though, since Andrew's too young for that, Brandon hates women, and Henrietta... I dunno. I don't know much about Henrietta. The mystery is so alluring.

Then Cartman, Kyle, and Stan showed up, ruining the pleasant silence we'd been having. I guess school let out. Henrietta gave Stan a distasteful look, put her cigarette out on the brick wall, and left. I asked her quickly if we could hang out again soon, and she said "for sure."

Very promising, considering she would usually say "whatever."

Cartman demanded to know why I was conspiring with Wendy against him, Stan wanted to know how I thought I was going to pass english if I skipped school, and Kyle said I had to tell him what kind of underwear Bebe wore because he and Red had a bet going.

I guess Bebe can't keep her fat mouth shut.

I gotta say though, Kyle's got a pretty cool girlfriend.

I told Kyle I hadn't fucked Bebe (he gasped and clutched his chest melodramatically because he's an ASSHOLE), I told Stan I'd bribe the student teacher's assistant to change my grade, and I pried Cartman's hands off of my neck and told him I wasn't conspiring against him with Wendy or anyone else, for that matter.

They were going to see a movie, but I'd already blown all my money on paint (Cartman said that if I wanted to get high off the fumes that I should buy hairspray, because it was cheaper. This is Cartman trying to be helpful.), so I told them I'd see them later.

I had to cross the river to get back to my house, and as I approached the bridge I noticed that Craig and Clyde were there. Craig was lighting fireworks and throwing them over the edge of the bridge, and Clyde was watching while eating a doughnut - they had one of those baker's dozen boxes sitting between them. Clyde turned bright red when he saw me and Craig licked his healing lip.

I wanted to sneak by without talking to them, but Craig pounced and asked if I'd be the subject of another movie. I gave him a most vocal no, and he rushed to assure me it would be a good old fashioned snuff film this time. So I gave him an even more vocal no.

Then Clyde offered me a doughnut.

It's not _fair._ All I'd had all day was a scrambled egg and a bunch of cigarettes. I still say bribing poor people with food is immoral.

Now that I'm finally home it's dark out, so I'm just going to stash the paint in my closet and go to bed.


	15. Friday, April 15

God, I hate when you're planning to take a sick day and then actually get sick. I spent the whole day in bed, hacking up mucus and expecting to die at any moment. I only got out of bed because of a particularly persistent pounding on the front door. Figures it was the one person that could make me sicker.

Bebe wanted to know why I was home alone if I was sick, and I told her my parents were off making meth.

I'm not sure if she believed me or not, but she looked really alarmed. She offered to come in and make me chicken soup, and I told her we didn't have any soup. She got this really miserable look on her face, so I demanded to know what the fuck she wanted before she started blubbering and treating me like a charity case. Bebe rubbed her shoulder and admitted that she'd come over to chew me out for skipping english class, but she hadn't known I was actually _sick._ I neglected to tell her I _was_ skipping. Serves her fucking right for her morally superior assumptions.

She said she'd decided she'd been too hasty and was willing to help me through _The Catcher in the Rye_. I told her I wasn't illiterate and that I'd already finished that gay book and Bebe got all thrilled, pushed herself inside, and set up her english notes on the coffee table before I could stop her. She started _quizzing_ me.

God she's obnoxious.

But I didn't kick her out, because what Mole said has been nagging at me. Mole thinks EVERYTHING is 'that bad.' I mean, the guy's an antisocial, anti-God, asexual anarchist. So I interrupted Bebe from her literature analyst lecture and asked he how Mole knew her. She fumbled for an answer for a while before admitting she had been the last one to hire him for his services.

So she's an ex-client of his. Still sort of weird because Mole usually complains about the stupidity of his ex-clients - Stan, Kyle, and Cartman in particular.

Bebe kept babbling about test material, and eventually we started watching the Three Stooges on my family's black-and-white TV. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, I guess. She finally left when my little sister came home and started hitting on her, badly. Bebe seemed especially unnerved by the experience.

I was sitting up in my room later, in the dark because I hadn't gotten a new bulb for the lamp yet, chugging cough syrup and wondering why my cold hadn't killed me yet, when Mole crawled in my bedroom window. He flopped down on my bed, offered me a generous box of communion wafers, and said "Do you know ze state decides 'ow many prisons to build based on 'ow many people drop out of school?"

I stared at him, 'cause the guy was wearing a _suit._ With a tie and everything. It's sort of a shock to the system. I finally said, "You don't say."

"Ze government assumes all of eet's citizens are criminals," Mole said. "You're failing english?"

I groaned. Bebe has the _biggest fucking mouth_. And now I know why Mole brought up dropping out - I'm only getting a good grade in French because Mole hand feeds me the answers, and I'm only passing history because Clyde lets me copy his homework.

I told him I wasn't dropping out of school, and he made a face at me and said "You're just skipping."

So I decided to change the subject and asked him what the hell was up with the suit, anyway?

Mole pried his tie off, scowled, and told me his parents had tried to drag him to confession. He gestured toward the crackers and told me to help myself, which I did, rather amused. "Dude," I said, "you stole their Jesus flesh?"

He grunted and complained about God and the church and that religious bitch that always sat in the front row and glared at him for a while, then he picked up his tie and said he had to go back home and face his parents for calling the priest a cock-sucking beetch and flipping him off. He told me I could keep the crackers, so I devoured the box.

Not exactly chicken soup, but it made me feel better.


	16. Saturday, April 16

I woke up to fried bacon.

Bebe, in my kitchen, frying bacon, with my little sister sitting at the table in her PJs and trying to look alluring. Bebe didn't seem to notice, but she greeted me cheerfully when I appeared in the doorway.

My first thought was that I was glad I'd thrown on a pair of pants before I came out of my bedroom. If I'd walked out naked Bebe probably would have freaked out and cracked my head open with the frying pan, even though she was trespassing with an intent to... cook meat? My second thought was that maybe my little sister had tempted her over to the other team after all, but the midget took that instant to throw her arms around my neck and proclaim I was the best brother in the world for letting "Betty" in.

Bebe slid some bacon onto a plate and offered it to me, and when it became apparent she wasn't going to explain herself I asked her how the hell she'd gotten into my house.

She said she'd tugged on the door and the lock gave way really easily. And okay, so what if our house is easy to break into? It's the principal of the matter. I told her to get the hell out, and she sighed and said she wasn't about to steal the torn up couch, three-legged coffee table, or black-and-white TV, so why couldn't she stay? Little sister agreed, loudly, and socked me in the side for being rude.

So I let her stay and I ate her bacon, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. When I left the house my sister was trying to convince Bebe spin the bottle was more fun with two people and no bottle.

I went down to the Museum of Tolerance, sat on that fountain out front and lit up, but Mole never showed up. I left when that hysterical woman came bursting out and yelled that I was going to give cancer to everyone who breathes. It's just not as much fun to mimic her when you don't have a cheesy French accent to do it with.

He wasn't at the playground, either, so I didn't stick around. I ended up at the mall and stumbled upon Red and Kyle (and Stan, because he stalks them on nearly all their dates) in the arcade. Kyle and Stan were sharing a slurpee and linking arms, and Red was playing pinball. You know, Red is probably the only girl in school that can handle dating a guy whose best friend is more like an appendage.

When I showed up they were trying to talk Red into getting Craig off the only shooting game. Stan greeted me and Kyle socked me in the arm when I merely wondered out loud if Stan tagged along for the sex, too. Red tore her winning tickets out of the pinball machine and informed me it was a date because Cartman was there too, and she and Kyle had a strict "a date doesn't count as a date if Kyle spends it bitching about Eric Cartman" rule. Apparently Cartman had gotten pissed off at the claw machine, so he was trying to pry the back off of it so he could steal all the stuffed animals.

I hung out for a while - Red succeeded in getting Craig off the shooter game, but then she stole it from Stan and Kyle. I didn't have cash for tokens or food, so I watched Mark and Rebecca work on some twin DDR thing until Cartman called me over. He'd succeeded in prying the back off of the machine, and all the prizes had spilled out onto the floor. He barked at me to go get a pack mule to carry them out of the arcade on, since, according to his infinite wisdom, "All poor people live with farm animals."

I left the arcade with no intention of returning with a beast of burden, or even of returning at all. I dunno why I still hang out with those guys - if Cartman's not trying to sell me on the black market for some quick cash, then Stan and Kyle are clutching one another to their chests and proclaiming their undying platonic love. They're all such a drag to be around.

I guess it's because everyone else in town is an even bigger asshole. Who else am I going to hang out with when Mole up and disappears, Craig? I'm more likely to get a restraining order against him.

I ran into Wendy on the way out. She was spying on Cartman under the pretense of purse shopping. You could tell her heart wasn't into it, though. Much as I hate to agree with Bebe, having Wendy NOT turn into a psychopath over designer bags is really off-putting. Everyone knows Wendy is fucking insane - at least when she's freaking out over purses the public knows how to protect itself. Who knows how to placate her now.

I was going to go throw myself in the river, because a day in heaven, even with those annoying angels, was better than a day of trying to avoid not only Craig and Bebe, but a no doubt vengeful Cartman as well. But on my way out of the mall I passed Hot Topic and there, in all her glory, was Henrietta herself.

I'd no sooner said hello than she grabbed me and dragged me off to her house. Her _house._ It's been years since I was allowed to be there - I really thought I never would be again.

Her mother greeted us at the door in the bright, bubbly way she does and asked Henrietta what we were up to. Henrietta rolled her eyes at me, glared at her mother, and told her we were going up to her room to drink scotch.

Her mother laughed and said, "Okay, sweetie!"

Sometimes Mrs. ... Henrietta's mom reminds me of Mrs. Cartman. A lot.

Henrietta always keeps the blinds closed and the room lit with candles. I sat down on her plush bed while she put in the CD she'd just bought from Hot Topic and remembered the last time I'd sat there. Three years to the _day. _They'd buried Kevin that morning, and Henrietta had ran a hand through my soon-to-be-black hair, given me a tightlipped smile, and told me she _understood._

Henrietta turned the music on low then flopped down next to me and stretched out, relaxing to the soothing tones of some guy singing about how life was pain. She pulled out a bottle of scotch from under her fucking_ pillow_ and offered me some. I declined - the last time I got drunk I tried to french a street sign, tried to rob a connivance store, and generally made an ass out of myself. The last thing I want to do is look like a dick in front of Henrietta.

She downed what was left in the bottle, then she grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me down for some good ol' tonsil hockey. See, the great thing about a goth's room is that the mood is already set.

I died. Figuratively, I mean, but it was a whole motherfucking lot better than Mormon heaven. Lameass day transformed to perfect day just like that. Three God damned _years_ I'd been waiting for Henrietta to kiss me... so of course the phone starts ringing.

We ignored it and it stopped, but then Henrietta's mom was knocking on the door saying it was for _me_. We probably would've still ignored her, except she mentioned that it was a girl, and then Henrietta pushed me off and made this _face_. So I _had_ to answer it. Guess who it was.

_Bebe_.

Who fucking else?

Turns out my parents finally came home. They were taking a little vacation in the town jail. I'd figured it was something like that - whenever Mom and Dad disappear for a few days it's usually because they're in prison, or doing something that could get them sent to prison. In either case it's better not to ask.

When they'd showed up Bebe took it upon herself to break into my room and go through my personal things, looking for phone numbers of places I might be. She actually went through and dialed three years' worth of girls' numbers. How kind of her to go to all that trouble to notify me - even though it meant racking up a phone bill my family can't pay, interrupting the best moment of my shitty life, and invading my privacy to tell me something that I a) would have found out myself when I got home and b) didn't give a shit about.

Henrietta pretty much kicked me out at that point and I didn't want to run into Cartman or Craig, so I had no choice but to go home. When I got there, I had the unpleasant surprise of finding Bebe sitting on my bed, going through one of my old sketch books. Judging by the disturbed look on her face, it was one of the gore-filled ones, not one of the porn-filled one. So she didn't find out about my Filipino-chicks-in-hats kink. Not that I really care if she knows about my kinks, the same way I didn't really care if Craig plastered my bare ass around the art festival, but Jesus, could the fuckers _ask_ first?

Usually I'd enjoy finding a hot chick in my bed, even if they have a personality like wood, but frankly the thought of _Bebe_ and _sex_ together just weirds me out.

"What're you doing here?" I demanded, after I took my sketchbook away from her.

"Do you _always_ draw people with their guts getting torn out by flocks of crows?" she said instead of _answering the damn question_. 'Course, I don't. I also draw three ways and homicidal clowns and shit like that, but it's none of her damn business either way, so I told her as much and added that she had no right to go through my stuff. And then I politely repeated the question.

She drew her knees to her chest and said in a hushed tone, "I think your little sister is a _lesbian_," like she said she was a leper or something. I asked her what tipped her off, and she said the little she-beast tried to kiss her after she'd claimed there was something in her eye and Bebe had leaned in to check. So she was hiding out in my room.

I asked her why she didn't just go the fuck home if she was worried about my pussy hound of a baby sister attacking her. She glared at me and shouted, "Maybe I don't want to go home, okay! Can't you sympathize with that!"

I almost cracked up the way I had at the Arts and Other Arts Festival. Of course I could sympathize with that sentiment. Fuck, who couldn't?


	17. Sunday, May 1

If Hell were a cake (and I assure you, it isn't), then these past two weeks were like being held down and having endless cake forced down your throat.

Bebe. Around. All the time. Bebe sitting next to me while I eat lunch (which has convinced Cartman there is, in fact, a Wendy conspiracy, so he chucked a shot put at me during PE. Lucky thing he has no arm strength, or I would have died for sure). Bebe holding up the microphone for Craig while he films his snuff films. Bebe coming over after school everyday to do homework. Kyle thinks we're fucking for sure, and he's pissed because he thinks I won't tell him what kind of panties Bebe wears to spite him. I can't talk to Henrietta because she hates "Britney Spears pep-rally conformists" like Bebe.

So Cartman wants me dead, Henrietta won't look at me, Kyle is pissed off, and Stan is shunning me because he and Kyle share a brain, or something.

I could usually count on Mole to drive people away with his delightful personality, but he's still MIA. I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since he crawled into my room in a suit and gave me stolen holy crackers. I get the feeling he wouldn't deter Bebe even if he was around. He thinks she "isn't that bad," and she seems to like him. If I didn't know Mole, I'd think they've had some sort of bizarre love affair. But Mole's asexual. He thinks sex is boring, at best.

And then Bebe tries to fucking ANALYZE Henrietta.

"You know she just acts out because her parents are so permissive. I mean, she does drugs and cuts and sleeps around and she never really cares about _anyone_. She needs boundaries. She's probably the loneliest of those weird goth kids, you know. Blah blah blah blah I'm a bitch."

But the icing on the cake was yesterday afternoon, when Bebe spearheaded a graveyard-cleanup service project. Trimming grass. Picking up trash. Scrubbing graffiti off of tombstones.

SCRUBBING MY GRAFFITI OFF OF MY FUCKING TOMBSTONES.

I didn't realize at first. I was preoccupied with watching Cartman and Wendy's latest fight. Wendy was pissed off because Cartman had stuffed all those stuffed animals he'd stolen from the arcade into her locker so that when she opened it she was buried in a pile of unnaturally colored rhinos, hippos, elephants, giraffes, and crocodiles. Cartman was pissed off because she called him fat.

She brought up Britney Spears. He countered with her boob job. They began beating each other with cleaning supplies like the civilized near-adults they are.

By the time I noticed what Bebe was doing, it was too late. I asked her who the hell she thought she was, cleaning up _my_ graves.

"That's the whole reason I organized this clean up! You can't honestly want a bunch of crap scribbled on your tombstones. There's, like, nothing more depressing than that."

"Bebe, you need to mind your own fucking business."

"Ugh! I am trying to do a nice thing for you, here! Because you've been so nice to me these past few weeks..."

Nice? NICE? Do I have to smack her in the FACE?

Bebe left in a huff and the rest of the cleaning crew soon followed. I hung around until they were all gone, looking at my freshly buffed graves.

Bebe's wrong. Bebe's a fucking idiot. Sure there's something more depressing than having graffiti all over a tombstone. She doesn't get it, no one could possibly get it, except maybe Mole - but he probably wouldn't care.

Seeing a grave that's _tended_ to, like it's someone who's missed. Seeing _my_ grave like that.

It really makes a guy feel _dead_.

And then there's Kevin's grave. Kevin, star of the McCormick clan. Kevin, the one that was supposed to Make It. Kevin, asshole older brother. Kevin, who's in the ground because I put him there.


	18. Monday, May 2

Cartman's off with Wendy. Somehow - I haven't the faintest idea how - smacking each other around with grave-cleaning supplies made them make up.

You know, out of all the reasons a person could hate Cartman, the reason I've always had is that everything always just works out for that fat asshole. It'd be different if he was a nice guy, but he's an ASSHOLE and things - for instance, one of the hottest girls in school - _still_ fall right into his lap.

I was eating lunch - well, I was trying to, but Craig was bugging me to star in another one of his snuff films and that, coupled with Cartman's lucky streak, was making me really pissed off - when I heard, "'E can't, beetch. 'E's spending ze afternoon with me."

Craig slunk off while I gaped at Mole, who gestured impatiently at Kyle and told him to move over. (Moving over entailed sitting in Stan's lap. Those guys... I've seriously run out of gay/straight jokes. I don't think there's one that really gives them justice.) He sat down and offered me some of his lunch - which I took, obviously. Horrifically bad accent aside, French cuisine is French cuisine. I scarfed it down before I asked, "Where the HELL have you been?"

Turns out Mole's parents decided his stunt at the church - swearing, blasphemy, offensive hand gesture, stealing the crackers, and all - was the final straw. They sent him to a Christian reform school. It took Mole two weeks to break out because he was bunking with some gay guy that snitched on him every time he tried to sneak out.

But that wasn't why Mole was pissed off.

"Zey took my SHOVEL."

So just as he was telling me we were going shovel shopping after school, Bebe The Bubbly came up and asked cheerfully if she could come along. I said "No," at the same time Mole said "Oui."

Cue awkward silence. I glared and Mole shrugged, and Bebe said, "Maybe next time."

I was stewing over it, so during the afternoon in the hardware store, while Mole was trying shovels out by swinging them around and knocking over displays and bitching about American craftsmanship, I asked him why he'd been so ready to invite her.

"Bebe eesn't so bad."

"Since WHEN? You hate everybody!"

"Not you," he pointed out, and whacked a pyramid of paint cans with a snow shovel. He gave the broken handle a disgusted look. "Shoddily made."

"Are you fucking her?"

It's the only explanation that makes any sense. But he just snickered and said, "I 'ave never even fucked my 'and. She is my client."

Bebe is Mole's client.

Wait. IS.

"Wait, don't you mean _was?_"

"Non."

"You told me you didn't do mercenary work anymore!"

He gave me this annoyed look. "I told you Bebe was my last client. And she is."

"So what the hell did she hire you to do?" Mole hesitated.

Mole NEVER hesitates.

"She should tell you zat."

What the fuck is up with those two?


	19. Saturday, May 7

So I just got back from chewing out that asscunt, Mole.

I just. I. Man, I thought I could TRUST him. Okay, so I never made him pinky swear not to tell anyone, but what the HELL. I can't believe he just... FUCKED me like that. It'd be different if it were _Cartman_ pulling this shit but...

I thought he was my friend. As gay as that sounds. I don't really HAVE friendships, not healthy ones. Cartman was my best friend for the first ten years of my life - that ought to more than prove my point. Mole, like... popped my friend cherry.

So to find out that it was all. Just. I mean, EVERYTHING, for the past two fucking YEARS was fake.

I remember I used to think of him as The Angry Kid With The Shovel, back before two years ago, and all of the THIS happened - then I figured people just misunderstood him. Boy did I fucking misunderstand him.

Boy do I sound like a fucking girl.

I shouldn't have. Misunderstood him. HE'S A FUCKING MERCENARY. I should have... seen this coming, or something. Anticipated it. Should've known he was only spending time with me because he wanted something, same as every-fucking-one else. Cartman, Craig, CLYDE... I need to steer the fuck away from "C" names.

I wonder if he really likes _Les Misérables_. Or British humor. The clove cigarettes are probably genuine. _Alice in Wonderland?_ Probably not.

After Bebe told me - and I'm pissed at her, too, but she didn't WORM her way into my life and LIE to me, to my FACE, every fucking day for two fucking years - I went to find him and tell him off. Tell him exactly where he could shove that brand new shovel. He was on main street, trying it out by prying the street sign out of the ground. I flipped him off, I swore, I was LOUD, but it didn't help the way screaming is supposed to help. My parents, they yell at each other all the time, but they always yell themselves out of their foul moods and then their relationship is always better for it. But I yelled at him and I just felt... worse.

It's not like he didn't wash the dishes, or got fired, or something.

He got all pissed off when I confronted him, too. Like he hadn't done anything wrong. The dick hole could've at least owned up to it.

I... Jesus fucking Christ. I figured something weird was going on between Mole and Bebe, but I never thought it would be something like this.

I need a Strawberry Cinnamon Bun. Too bad they shut down the 8-10 because they found out a drug lord was operating out of it. Story of my fucking life.

What Mole Did, Anyway:

Bebe hired him to WATCH me. That day two years ago, when Henrietta rejected me and the goths kicked me out and he found me in the rain? He was only there because Bebe had asked him to be.

Every day since then, he's only been there because Bebe was paying him.

He was my friend because he was FUCKING PAID TO DO IT.

That day. When he found me, and I told him everything about Kevin, things I didn't want _anyone_ to hear and I only said because it was driving me insane not saying it so I told Mole because he'd always been such a _no one_ and then like the idiot I am I figured he was the only _someone_ I could trust-...

He probably ran right over to Bebe after he made me take a shower and gave me clean clothes and coffee and reported everything I told him like a good little mercenary.

... I feel sick.


	20. Thursday, May 12

If Saturday was "The Day I Realized Mole Was Using Me", then Sunday was "The Day I Realized That, Yes, God Really Does Hate Me. Me, Personally. Because There's No Way He'd Let This Much Shit Happen To One Person Unless He Wanted Them To Suffer."

I couldn't write about it Monday, or Tuesday, or yesterday. I mean, I tried. But I wasn't sure how to TACKLE writing down something like this. So, while I wait for the paint to dry, I'll recount Sunday as best as I can:

**5:18 AM:**

Woke up from a dream about Kevin. Lovely way to start a day.

**5:27 AM:**

Post-dream-haze wearing off. Stared at ceiling. Remembered three years have passed.

**5:29 AM:**

Realized the cracks in my ceiling look like a tiger humping a turtle.

**5:30 AM:**

Thought about how I used to cloud gaze - hey, when you're poor, free entertainment is free entertainment - before Kevin died. Thought about how I was never able too see anything after he died. It all just looked like a bunch of construction paper cut-outs.

**5:31 AM:**

"Construction" paper. What the hell can you construct with paper that won't get destroyed?

**5:35 AM:**

Noticed that below the tiger-turtle-fuck was a policeman clubbing some defenseless woman.

Thought Mole would get a kick out of that.

Remembered Yesterday.

**5:38 AM:**

Resolved never to leave my bedroom. Tried to go back to sleep.

**5:46 AM:**

Failure, thy name is Kenny McCormick.

Unable to sleep, I raided the kitchen. It was while going through the fridge that I uncovered two things: four frozen pizzas Bebe bought during her Intrude On Kenny's Life campaign, and a box of canelés Mole gave me The Friday Before The Saturday.

You have to understand. Next to Strawberry Cinnamon Buns - which are actually better than the food of the Gods, because heaven is full of Mormons so, guess what? No caffeine - canelés are my one true comfort food. Mole knows this. Mole always made sure he had them in his house when I came over. Even though this meant speaking to his mother to get her to make them, and _not_ speaking to his mother was like an art form to him.

I stood there and stared at the food while my pride and my stomach waged a battle of epic proportions. I thought about all the degrading things I've ever done for food - and I don't mean just in the last two months, with Craig and everything. I mean throughout my entire life.

**6:09 AM:**

I ran it all down the garbage disposal. Canelé pizza. An unholy joining of French cuisine and an American bastardization of Italian cuisine.

Turned on the television and tried to find something that wasn't an infomercial. Sadly, that's all that's on during the day, because that's when their target audience - namely, the unemployed who are susceptible to claims of a better, non-loser life if they only buy some _Urine Gone! Stain & Odor Eliminator_ - are watching.

**6:41 AM:**

Considered the 3-in-1 ways I could kill myself with a 3-in-1 Shredder.

**8:55 AM:**

Little sister woke up and bitched about the disappearing pizza. Apparently she was planning on having it for breakfast.

**10:30 AM:**

Little sister departed to the mall for a day of shoplifting short skirts and pretending to work at the bra store so that she can feel girls up and pretend she'd measuring their cup size.

I didn't think it'll work. She's thirteen, after all. That violates child labor laws. It's not like someone's going to buy that she's in retail.

**10:31 AM:**

On the other hand, this IS South Park.

**11:17 AM:**

Couldn't watch any more infomercials without taking a staple gun to my head first. And whatever else has happened, as least I haven't died recently. I turned the TV off and called Stan to tell him what Mole had done.

I called Stan for two reasons:

**A)** He never liked Mole. Even before the Kyle/Wendy, Cartman/Shelly fiasco that drove him to my side for a week, he's always had a distaste for him. Therefore, he's the best choice for trash talking. Kyle's dislike for Mole isn't half as vehement, because Mole never got up in his face the way he did with Stan. Also, he held him while he died. Apparently this is the sort of thing that endears you to a person. Unless that person is me. Complaining to Cartman is a stupid idea, because while he hates that "British piece of shit," he'd be very happy to laugh at my expense as well. Telling Craig would have been equally stupid - that would involve speaking to him, which would undoubtedly lead to another film project. And there's no one else TO tell, because I either don't know them well enough or they don't know Mole well enough. No one knows the both of us well enough to understand the significance of what Mole DID to me.

Well, that's a lie. There's the bitch that hired Mole to watch me in the first place. BEBE certainly knows every intricate detail of our "friendship".

**B)** All fag jokes aside, Stan IS the most understanding person I know, and possibly the only person in South Park that really gives a shit about me. Even back when we were kids, before Cartman had Scott's parents killed and crossed that threshold from "bastard" to "psychopath", he was the only one in the group that was a genuine friend. Cartman was a dick who attached the best friend label to me because he didn't like feeling like he didn't have something. Kyle... Kyle's always been all about Stan. I'm not really his friend; he doesn't give a crap about me.

So I called Stan.

**11:18 AM:**

Got a busy signal. He is quite obviously talking to Kyle.

**11:20 AM:**

Stood by the window and looked out at Stan's house. We live right next door to each other, separated by the railroad tracks. You know, before Stan and Kyle met and glued their heads together (figuratively and, during first grade art class, literally), _I _was Stan's best friend. That's what happens when you're five and the only qualifications you need in a friend are location, location, location.

I knew Kyle because his mother and my mother are friends. Play dates used to be a common occurrence. (Kyle hated my house just as much as I did.) Kyle and Stan actually met _through_ me.

I can understand them cutting me out. That's what happens when you die. That's the whole _point_ about dying - you have to miss out on living. And I can't honestly say I'm disappointed we didn't join together in some sort of holy trinity of brotherhood. Our opinions and values and lifestyles are just too different to mesh properly.

Still, I'd like to be able to talk to someone.

**11:23 AM:**

I remember saying that that was one of the things I liked best about Mole. That he listened to me and didn't act like I was speaking in an indecipherable mumble. He actually took in all I had to say.

Then he took it and repeated it all to Bebe.

**11:25 AM:**

Hated Mole for a while.

**11:45 AM:**

Hated Mole some more.

**12:10 PM:**

Still hated Mole, but by now my stomach was aching. Took some money from Dad's wallet (either I take it or it gets spent on beer, so I don't feel too choked up about stealing from my father) and set out to get something cheap.

**12:40 PM:**

Finished a nice, big meal of pizza at the Shakey's. Didn't consider this ironic in the least.

**12:55 PM:**

Realized just how hard it is to go somewhere in town that doesn't remind me of Mole. The Museum of Tolerance is out. So is the library. The playground. The coffee shop.

I ended up going to Colfax Point. Those memories were of the _good_ kind of screwing.

**1:09 PM:**

Ducked into the Peppermint Hippo and got a lap dance from Brandi Wine. I was out of money after that, something the strippers quickly picked up on (I think they have a sixth sense). They all drifted off to the older, not-dirt-poor patrons. I left - I went to get off, not to watch seventy-year-old men spend their retirement.

**1:30 PM:**

I thought about Rebecca, the sweetheart-turned-slut. She used to wear a Peppermint Hippo t-shirt with pride.

Kyle would kill me if he knew, but Rebecca was my first. We were both a little older than thirteen - which sounds pretty young, I guess, but I'd been waiting to get laid since I was eight years old. I have to give Rebecca credit - she's got a pretty plain face, and her tits are on the small side, but she pulls off the slut thing better than girls a thousand times prettier.

We had a sort-of relationship. She bailed after Kevin. I don't blame her. We weren't in love, or anything.

**1:35 PM:**

It's funny that I'm thinking about the girl I didn't love when I stumble across the girl I do love.

**1:36 PM:**

Her: "If it isn't Ken. Where's Barbie?"

Me: "I told Bebe off, Henrietta."

Her: "..."

**1:46 PM:**

It took ten minutes (and 21 seconds) to drive to Henrietta's house. Henrietta likes to speed.

**1:47 PM:**

I like sex. All teenaged boys do, unless they're Mole. But before Rebecca there was nothing, and after Rebecca there was next to nothing - a little service with a smile from some of the Raisins girls. Hand jobs are just part of the job to them.

So I'm never-tell-anyone-nervous.

**1:48 PM:**

Her parents aren't home and she pulls me inside her room and then she pulls me between her legs and her room stinks like the scented candle isle in True Value even though it's supposed to smell like High Tide and Fresh Cut Roses and Sunwashed Linen and a thousand other things you can't smell in South Park because in South Park there's only diesel fuel and snow and my blood to smell and she took off her big black curly wig and I ran my hands through her short spiky hair and she took off the rest of her clothes and I ran my hands over the rest of her skin too and I never knew she had a pierced belly button or a sarcastic Have A Nice Day razor scar on the inside of her thigh but I did know she would make those noises and bite like that and bash her head on the headboard like that and I KNEW it would be better than Rebecca and more fantastic than Ferrari and it was worth waiting two years for and I would have waited another two years and another two and a thousand two-years more.

**2:14 PM:**

I loved her and I wanted to bask in afterglow forever-after and I really wish we'd fallen asleep in each other's arms and that had been that.

_I_ fell asleep. She didn't. Maybe she's just not into the whole dreaming thing.

**3:59:18 PM:**

I remember the time exactly because when I woke up I was staring at Henrietta's clock, and I was thinking how I would love for that to be the first thing I saw for the rest of my life. The sleep haze wore off. I sat up. Saw Henrietta sitting on the edge of the bed in all her goth apparel with my jeans in her lap, going through my wallet.

**4:00:36 PM:**

"What are you doing?"

**4:00:38 PM:**

Her: "You haven't got any money."

Me: "Um, yeah."

Her: "..."

Me: "... What-?"

Her: "Hot Topic isn't CHEAP."

**4:02:11 PM:**

Realization, mortification, and that same not-sick-not-well feeling I had after I yelled at Mole and didn't feel better.

**4:02:24 PM:**

Me: "Henrietta, I didn't - I was - I thought - I _love_ you."

Her: "Thought you loved me, maybe."

**4:02:31 PM:**

Her: "You don't _know_ me. You can't love someone without knowing them."

**4:02:40 PM:**

Her: "And if you knew me, you wouldn't have loved me."

**4:02:43 PM:**

Her: "You would have expected this."

**4:22 PM:**

I returned home. My clothes fit all wrong - they were too tight around the chest, too loose around the waist. My parents and sister were all home - little sister had a new skirt and a "I grabbed titties" grin on her face.

I needed to take a shower.

**4:25 PM:**

It was fucking FREEZING.

**4:37 PM:**

Heard Dad yelling at little sister as I left the bathroom. He thinks she took the missing money from his wallet for the skirt.

I hovered in the threshold for a while, then I went into my room and locked the door. Laid out on my bed and watched the cracks.

**4:43 PM:**

This isn't like the sluty girls at school, or the bimbo waitresses at Raisins, or even the pole dancers down at the Peppermint Hippo.

I mean. Hookers. They're supposed to be like the locker room stories Jimmy has of Nut-Gobbler.

**5:20 PM:**

She really would have stolen from me. She really would have taken all of my money out of my wallet while I slept even though she _knows_ I'm on welfare and I _know_ her parents happily pay for all of her goth gear.

I've never thought of myself as naive before. Ever. Not innocent, not idealistic, not unjaded. My house makes up South Park's ghetto. My brother died when he was sixteen. My parents make meth. My whole family drinks and smokes and shoplifts and buys porn. I _DIE_.

I don't know why I didn't see this coming. Henrietta. Mole.

**5:22 PM:**

Dad and little sister still screaming at each other. I wish screaming would work for me.

**5:24 PM:**

Why WON'T it? Did I just screw myself by wearing that parka for so many years?

Or because I don't talk about Kevin?

**5:35 PM:**

Noticed that the cracks extend to my wall. And they don't look like anything, either.

**5:40 PM:**

Jiggled my foot until I couldn't stand the stupid cracks anymore, and then I got up and pulled the lead-based paint I'd bought from True Value out of the closet. I haven't painted anything since my landscape of hell got trashed by Tweek's disastrous attempt at drag racing. Maybe that's what I need to get rid of this not-entirely-healthy feeling. I do like the arts, as gay as it is. It's... therapeutic, I guess.

It's not house paint that I got. There're oil paints - pretty nice ones, actually, considering this is South Park, where the bars outnumber the museums five to one... and that's if you count the Museum of Tolerance.

**5:56 PM:**

Took off my shirt because I was getting paint all over it. I finally caught sight of the logo on it: Nazi Atheist Misanthrope Bisexuals Love Anilingus. Or, NAMBLA. I got it about two months after Mole first made contact with me, when our "friendship" was still new and a little weird, but not really _uncomfortable_. He took me to North Park, where they were having a battle of the bands with a twist - each band was trying to be more offensive than the one before them, not play better music. NAMBLA was my favorite - I liked them enough to buy an overpriced t-shirt, anyway.

Four girls and three guys hit on Mole while we were there. It was on ride back home (the people who'd given Mole and me a ride over there - I guess they were mercenary friends of Mole's or something, they all had that same scruffy look - ditched us, so we had to hitch a ride back home in the back of a truck full of stray cats that were being rounded up so they could be put to sleep) that Mole explained asexuality to me and finally put to rest the "Chris is the biggest French queen since Marie Antoinette" rumor that had been floating around school.

I wadded the shirt up and chucked it into the garbage can.

**6:00 PM:**

Mom called me for dinner. Dad was drinking, which always meant he calmed down for a while before exploding even more violently. Little sister was looking especially pissed off. I wasn't about to get in the middle of that.

Mom made SpaghettiOs and microwaved some TV dinners. Beats frozen waffles.

No one asked why I wasn't wearing a shirt.

**6:15 PM:**

Returned to my room, resumed painting.

**7:48 PM:**

Why am I so easy to use?

**9:37 PM:**

Kenny McCormick: Disposable. Biodegradable. User Friendly.

ALL kinds of degradation, actually.

I should be my own infomercial.

**10:05 PM:**

I decided, fuck Moronism. I haven't been keeping up with the conversion requirements, anyway. And I don't really give a fuck anymore.

Hell - REAL HELL, not Satan's private residence but the part of hell with the damned and the torture that's not unlike standing in endless lines at the post office - can't be any worse than everything else.


	21. Friday, May 13

Three years ago, when Kevin died, not one could figure out why _I_ was mourning.

Certainly I was just going to see his again the next time I died, the same way I still saw Chef. So clearly I had no reason to mourn him, right? That was absurd. That was like people mourning ME.

The thing is, I'd never - still have never, and never ever plan to - told anyone that I don't go to what I call the "Public Hell." Satan had decided, back when I was eight, that I would make the perfect playmate for his chronically depressed son. I kept Damien company and out of Satan's hair, and in exchange I never had to face fire or brimstone or torture or telemarketers.

Of course this meant I was subjected to Damien every time I died, which was nearly as bad. But I got to lounge around Satan's penthouse, watch TV on their big screen, binge on good food, go shopping (at Damien's insistence), play ping pong, and never, EVER have to mingle with the vast majority of the damned. I only ever saw the people Satan let into his gated community, i.e. the famous and/or the talented. I never had to walk among the billions of _average_ people that go to hell. No elementary school chefs.

No poor, whitetrash, sixteen-year-old boys from small mountain towns.

After the funeral, I just stood there and stared at his grave. **Beloved son, brother.** I felt like it was mocking me. Mocking the second-to-last thing I ever said to him. "_I HATE you, dickhole!_"

I thought to myself, _No one will ever understand how I feel_. Which is a perfectly cliché thing for a thirteen-year-old to think, but no one DID understand. Not only did they misinterpret my feelings (_You miss him? Why do you miss him?_) but they wrote them off as ridiculous (_You'll see him a half-dozen times a week, at least!_).

I didn't MISS Kevin. I felt angry. Bitter. And so, so guilty.

I heard footsteps, and then a raspy alto voice said, "Funerals are such a joke."

I stared at Henrietta. Of course I knew her - the South Park Middle School eighth grade class was a small one. Everyone knew everyone.

"What?"

"A bunch of people stand up and spew a bunch of bullshit about what a tragic loss that person was, and how they'll be missed, and how they're in a better place." She removed the cigarette from her lips and blew out a long train of smoke.

Henrietta was dressed in clothes that, while black, were thoroughly indecent for a funeral. I stared at her tits and welcomed the distraction. Thought about how alive she was, instead of how alive Kevin _wasn't_.

"You don't have to die to get to a better place. You just have to leave South Park."

Henrietta did something I have never heard her do since - or even heard _of_ her doing. She laughed.

We talked. Rather, I talked, and she made short responses in between drags on her cigarette. She told me she attended every funeral that was held in South Park, and even a few in North Park.

"I've been to every one of yours," she told me.

Not even my FAMILY had been to all of them.

She left after that, but not before giving me her cigarette. It was the first time I'd smoked since fourth grade. It didn't repulse me this time, though. Probably because it had been resting between her lips.

I was hooked, just like that. Smoking, Henrietta. Smokin' Henrietta.

When I think back on it now, I look so pitifully _clingy._ But in a world where my so-called friends took to calling up Butters instead of me for outings until I "Cheered up and got over it" and my family were pelting me with messages to give Kevin the next time I "Went to heaven", I thought Henrietta - the Graveyard Goth Girl who _understood_ at thirteen that South Park was worse than hell - might also _understand_ how someone could feel anger, and bitterness, and GUILT toward their dead brother.

When I went to join the goths she vouched for me, even though I was The Conformist's (a.k.a. Raven a.k.a. Stanley Marsh) friend. And when she asked for details about how Kevin died, I told them to her.

But not all of them.

Only Mole knows _all_ of them.

... And Bebe.

And it was a complete fluke, me telling Mole. I never meant to. Never intended to tell anyone. But after a year, I worked up the nerve to tell Henrietta I loved her. And I was booted out of the Goth Group right there and then - told to turn in my eye liner and kicked right out of Jason/Dante's house into the rain. Goth No-no Numbero Uno: You don't fall in _love_.

I went and sat in the playground and Mole stumbled upon me - but he didn't really _stumble_ upon me, he'd been _following_ me - and took me to his house. And because it was the anniversary of That Night, and because Henrietta didn't love me, and because I'd been so used to wearing a hood before that it didn't really register that my words weren't muffled now and Mole would understand every single one of them, or maybe because I was _still_ clinging to the hope _someone_ would understand, I babbled. I blabbed. I told him about Kevin and about his death and about the anger and the bitterness and the guilt _guilt GUILT_ that hadn't gone away even after year, that I was afraid would never go away.

That was actually a very lucky coincidence for Mole. That Bebe hired him to watch me on the exactly day I was my most vulnerable. I know that if he'd approached me on any other day, on any other occasion, I wouldn't have poured my heart out over a box of canelés. Maybe we still would have talked. Maybe we would have even still become fake-friends. But there's no fucking way I would have told him about that night.

... I've really been clinging to Henrietta all this time. (Yeah, THAT'S a "No, duh" revelation.) Clinging to the idea that there was someone who wouldn't just understand, but _care_. But this week has quite definitively proven that there _isn't_.

I'm on my own, now. Well, no. I've always been on my own. At least now I finally KNOW it. At least I know who I can trust - namely, no one. At least this sort of thing will never happen to me again.


	22. Sunday, May 15

Yesterday I ran out of paint trying to paint reflections onto the wet cobblestone street that is currently adorning my wall. It's harder than it sounds.

I stopped painting for a while and sat down, but then I started thinking about _everything_ again and sort of freaked out, so I pulled on a sweater shirt, swiped some more money from Dad, and headed out to True Value.

When I got there, though, I saw Stan and Kyle fooling around by the garden supplies. Stan was brandishing this stone gargoyle thing and proclaiming it was the single ugliest thing he'd ever seen, and it would be a sin against the birthday gods to not get it for Kyle.

At which point I remembered Kyle's birthday was in less than two weeks, and Stan had been talking about buying the absolute worst gift possible for the past three _months _for Kyle's sweet sixteenth. Stan's reasoning was that there really was no way he could get something better than Kyle's millionaire-cousin-Kyle or Red's hints at a devirginization, so he would get him something so tasteless, ugly, and impractical that it would be forever seared into his memory. Years into the future, when Kyle was suffering a slow death from Alzheimer's, he would forget everything except that the gift had been spectacular, and he would fill in the missing pieces with a pleasing memory of the perfect gift.

It made me feel a little sick, so I ducked back out before they saw me. Because I'd been skipping school for a week to sit around my room and paint with lead paint, so the minute they saw me they would have ambushed me in an attempt to find out what was wrong, and the rest of the day it would be all about ME. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to wedge myself into what was _theirs_.

It was pretty dreary. Summer's almost here, so it's too warm to really snow. At the time there was so much water in the air that my clothes got all wet even though it wasn't raining. I wandered around because I didn't want to go back to my room without anything to paint, and I ended up at the park. I flopped down in one of the swings. A tree is planted right over the swing set, so it wasn't quite as wet as everything else.

I was just wondering what, exactly, it was about me that I couldn't form connections the way Stan and Kyle can. Not like _their_ connection, exactly, because I can't really imagine being so touchy-feely with another person. But like, say... Clyde and Craig. Craig went through the hassle of the Arts and Other Arts Festival and took a beating from Token just so Clyde could get a chance to kiss me. I found out about his gay little crush during the last two weeks of April, but I never wrote about it because Bebe was pissing me off so much I didn't have time to think about anything else. Clyde told Craig, who mentioned it to Red because she's basically the only person other than Clyde that he listens to/doesn't flip off, who told Kyle because they are apparently in soon-to-consumate-heterosexually love, who told me so that "In case Chris breaks up with you, you know there's another boy out there willing to jump your bones." Like Kyle is one to insinuate gay relations between guy friends, when he has no problem with sitting in Stan's lap.

Or like Tweek and Token. They look so weird together, but they're both sort of crazy and it balances out. ("When you're rich it's called _eccentric_," Token told me once.) Tweek's friends have to be just like his coffee: strong, black, and something he can be totally dependent on. So Token talks him into crazy ideas like drag racing (bad idea) or boxing (surprisingly good idea. You can go see "The Tweak make his opponents tremble" every other Friday night at the ring). He also defends him against Craig's verbal abuse and Jason/Dante's coffeehouse come-ons.

I was sitting there on the swings, thinking about fucked-up friendships and my own inability to connect with anyone, when the last person in the world I wanted to see showed up. Talking of fucked-up "friendships"...

I GLARED at Mole. I can glare pretty well. It comes from years and years of only being able to express myself with my eyebrows.

"Zere you are," he said.

"What the fuck do you want?"

Mole sucked on the inside of his cheek. "I asked Bebe why you were so pissed off-"

"Well, since you tell Bebe everything, I guess it's about time she return the favor-"

"Look, beetch-"

I took a swing at him. He ducked - benefit of being a short snake in the grass.

"Fuck off."

"Kenny-"

"FUCK OFF, Mole."

"We need to talk."

"I'm through telling you _SHIT._"

Mole glared. He's not bad at it himself, what with his unamerican eyebrows.

"Zis is a mistake-"

"I figured that out, asshole."

"I mean, you misunderstood-"

"I sure as fuck did."

"_Let me talk, beetch-_"

"Go FUCK yourself, Frenchie-"

Which was when HE took a swing at ME. And got me right in the stomach, since it's practically eye level. I nearly threw up.

"... Asshole."

Mole groaned and massaged his forehead. "Bebe... left out certain details."

"I know enough."

"Kenny-"

"I'm out of here." At which point I tried to shove past Mole, and he quite easily bent my arm backwards and incapacitated me. I wasn't really expecting him to be that good at it, though I suppose I should have. Mercenary, and all that.

"Let me GO."

"Let me EXPLAIN," he said. I probably would have told him to fuck himself again if he hadn't let me go then. I straightened, crossed my arms. Glared. Mole hesitated the way he did when we went shovel shopping two weeks ago. That feels like a lifetime ago - though my lifetimes tend to be short.

"You were honest we me," he finally said. "So I'll be honest with you. I wasn't in a Christian reform school for two weeks. I was in Reno, looking for Bebe's muzzere."

"Is that really the best lie you can come up with?"

Mole groaned again and resumed rubbing his forehead. "Eet's true. Zat's what Bebe hired me to do."

I snorted. "Bebe never mentioned her mother getting lost in Nevada."

"She didn't get lost. She ran away to Vegas with another woman."

That threw me for a minute, before I remembered this was MOLE, asshole extraordinaire, who sold my secrets to Bebe for a cheap buck. "Yeah, right. Bebe's been hanging off my arm constantly, chattering away. She'd have MENTIONED something like that."

"Why do you _zink_ she was clinging to you?" Mole said. "... I would zink you would understand clinging to someone else when-"

"_SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT KEVIN, HORSEFUCKER._"

Mole did shut up.

"_YOU of all fucking people have NO RIGHT-_"

"Kenny, I _didn't tell Bebe anything_."

"BEBE TOLD ME SHE HIRED YOU TO WATCH ME! NOW YOU'RE MAKING UP THIS BULLSHIT STORY TO, WHAT? GET BACK IN MY GOOD GRACES SO YOU CAN STILL GET PAID?"

"I'm not denying Bebe asked me to watch you!" he snapped. "But I never got _paid_ and I _NEVER TOLD ANYONE ABOUT KEVIN, KENNY_."

"Fuck you, man. _Fuck. You_."

Mole grabbed me by the elbows - smart, because then I couldn't bend my arms and thus couldn't beat the shit out of him like I wanted to. "You thought I stole your porn and eet turned out I didn't do zat, either."

"_This_ is completely different from _that_, bastard."

"I'm your best friend," Mole said, glaring. "You could 'ave given me ze benefit of ze doubt."

"You _aren't_ and we _weren't._ I was a job."

"You weren't."

"You admitted you were only there because Bebe asked you to be! Even if you DIDN'T get paid and you DIDN'T tell her everything - which I don't believe for a fucking second - you weren't there because you _wanted_ to be."

"I do," Mole protested. "I wouldn't be here now if I didn't want to be."

"Fuck you. You've been lying for two years; there's not a single thing you could say to me that I'd believe-"

"When Kevin died, I wished you'd died instead."

My throat closed up. Mole let go of my arms and I sort of flopped backwards onto the swing.

I've spent the last three years _knowing_ people - namely, my family - felt this way. I can't tell you the sort of relief it is to finally have it acknowledged, that things would be so much better if only I'd died instead of my brother.

I also felt like everything from my gut to my throat had been torn out, though. (The sort of mauling I have experienced firsthand numerous times.)

Mole rubbed his palms against his jeans uncomfortably. He looked like he wanted to pace, or something. After a while he sat on the swing next me and started rambling:

_Gregory was the only real friend I had, we'd known each other forever, he was on MY side even though I was against everything, but his mother was so paranoid something would happen, and she always talked about moving back out of South Park, and when Kevin got in that car crash she decided it was just too dangerous here and they moved away, and that's why I REALLY stopped doing mercenary work, not because I'm a klepto, and when I read about the crash in the newspaper I remember thinking how Greg would've never left if it had been YOU to die, because no one cares when you die, and I hated you for that, though I know that's a stupid thing to do now._

_And when you fell in with the goths I thought, well, at least you were as miserable as I was, and I know you feel like no one cared but Henrietta during that year, but Bebe DID, even though she thought you were a creepy jerk, and she was frustrated with Stan and Kyle for not doing anything to help you out, and because she couldn't MAKE anyone help you out she thought she could pay me to do it, and THAT'S what she tried to hire me to do, Kenny, HELP you, not SPY on you, but I turned her down because I DIDN'T want to help you out, I wanted you to suffer, and she asked me to do it at least three dozen times during that year you were a goth, but I kept turning her down._

_And then that night, when you got kicked out of the goths and I found you at the bus stop, I guess I just realized that you'd wished you'd died instead of Kevin, too, and how fucked up that was, and how fucked up I was, and I felt like I HAD to help, like I owed it to you, like I could make up for hating you, and at first it was that and also, maybe, I guess, replacing Greg, but then after that battle of the bands I really got to know you and you weren't Greg and it wasn't obligation, and in a really fucked way I was GLAD, for the first time, that you had lived and Kevin hadn't because I would have never become your friend otherwise._

_And a few weeks ago Bebe approached me, again, but this time it had nothing to do with you, Kenny, it was about her mother, who'd been attending gay pride rallies for a while by that time but on April 6th she actually met another woman and on the 15th she just took off with her, and all she left Bebe was a note telling her she was sorry but she'd been confused as a young woman and only dated boys because they'd always flocked around her because of her DD tits and she felt like it was what she was supposed to do, but it was never what she WANTED to do, and that she hoped Bebe would forgive her for running away, and Bebe wanted me to find out where her mother had gone, not because she wanted to see her, but just so that she KNEW, in case she ever DID want to see her, and I did it for her because she tried so hard to get someone to help you, Kenny, and that's why I think she isn't that bad, because she ISN'T, she's better than me, she cared without any sort of reason._

_And when you asked she told you about trying to hire me to watch out for you instead about hiring me to hunt down her mother because she feels the same way about her mother that you feel about Kevin, Kenny, and she doesn't want to talk about it anymore than you do, and I didn't want to tell you about Bebe's mother the same way I don't want to, AND NEVER WOULD, tell anyone about Kevin, but I'd rather Bebe hate me that you, Kenny, if that's what it comes down to, and I think it has._

Mole stopped talking. He leaned forward on the swing, and rested his elbows on his knees, and dug his fingers into his hair, and kept on Not Talking.

The humidity had thoroughly soaked us both at this point. Water was dripping into my eyes and down the back of my neck from my hair, and my socks had gotten wet. There is nothing quite as uncomfortable as wet socks.

Except the long silences after someone spills something like that, I guess.

The more I think about it, the more it fits together. Bebe was at that gay rally I had to take my little sister to; she _told_ me she was looking for her mom. She didn't quite know how to react to little sister's lesbianism. Mole went Missing In Action at the same time Bebe got REALLY clingy.

God. Does this make me Bebe's Henrietta?

I licked my lips and looked over at Mole, who was watching me with a sort-of anxious look. I remember when he found me; Henrietta had been working as a buffer for a whole year and I hadn't had to actually deal with Kevin's death, but then it was slapping me right in the face. I'd hit absolute rock bottom, and instead of life throwing me a shovel it had thrown a boy with a shovel strapped to his back, carrying an umbrella marked PROPERTY OF TOKEN BLACK my way.

And whatever Mole's reasons, or intentions, I felt relieved telling the things about Kevin's car crash that only I knew. Why he was even in the car. What I said to him.

I wondered if it would work again.

"Henrietta," I said, and he let his arms drop. "Is a, um. She sleeps around for money."

"... I know," he said, then braced himself like he was expecting me to start screaming again and throw a another punch.

"_What?_ How?"

"You were gone for a week and I thought she would know where you were."

I buried my face in my hand. Mole dug into his pocket, and then he pulled out my wallet and handed it to me. I stared. With everything going on, I'd left it at Henrietta's place and forgotten. I turned it over in my hands. "Klepto."

Mole smirked a little.

"... I don't expect you to understand, but I really did love her."

Mole leaned over and ran a hand over my head in a weird half noogie, half head-petting maneuver. "Just because I don't want to 'ave sex doesn't mean I don't understand love. Dumbfuck."


	23. Monday, May 16

**8:45 PM, April 13th, Three Years Ago:**

My head was throbbing. I had blood in my eye, but I wasn't dead. I lifted my head, feeling sore, and looked around the car. This is what I saw, in order: spider web fractures across the windshield and glass on the dashboard; my arms, thrown instinctively in front of me, bloodied but not broken; the mud on my insoles and the ratty state of my shoe laces; my brother, Kevin, spread across the steering wheel, dead, beside me.

Rewind the scene thirty minutes. Kevin is alive. The cars - both the one we were riding in and the one that slammed into us - are undamaged. And I am just beginning to feel the effects of the three beers I chugged as I sit next to Clyde on the steps of his back porch, my legs stretched out in the mud in front of me.

Let me set the stage. The place: The Donovan's large house. The occasion: Clyde's eighteen-year-old sister is throwing a party for _high school students_. I will be attending high school in five short months, provided I don't flunk out of my math class. I don't think it's particularly fair, because I wasn't able to buy the fancy graphing calculator required for the course. Unbeknownst to me, Clyde had spent the past torturous seven months of eighth grade questioning his sexuality. As I sat there with him, making up new, witty, dirty constellations, his little crush on me first began to develop. And here is why I would never be able to requite it, even if I DIDN'T find the idea of screwing around with another guy to by completely repulsive: it was from leaving the Donovan's house that Kevin met his death.

I was at the party for one very simple reason: Kevin wasn't. Kevin came to the party for one very simple reason: I was.

The mood, or rather, MY mood, because Clyde was feeling a fluttering in his stomach and the partygoers were all enjoying themselves inside: Triumphant. Smug. Bitter. Inadequate. Ignored. Forgotten. Unloved. Angry. Light-headed, but that was from the alcohol. The rest were all born from living in the slums; from always being in need of a shower, haircut, and fresh change of clothes; from having an older brother that had a mind that just might propel him out of South Park; from not being able to buy a graphing calculator.

Let me brake here and explain Kevin. Kevin, while not a genius, was a cut above the average white-bread/red-blooded hicks that populated South Park. His test scores pumped life into a school system that had seemed to give out long ago. And he didn't waste his talents on meth, beer, and sex, as did the normal McCormick. He did homework. Got jobs and funneled the money into a back account, where it could accumulate interest. Kevin intended to put himself through college. At sixteen years old, he already had his life planned out. My life plan at thirteen consisted of getting Rebecca to have sex with me as often as possible. My life was still rocking with the discovery that there were girls out there that LET you have sex with them.

No one can imagine what it's like to be the younger brother of a Wonder Son. My parents were only interested in Kevin's prospective prosperity. My little sister had picked out a brother to worship, and I wasn't it. At thirteen, I was your average, skinny, dirty little bastard. I had no defining traits. That was before I discovered painting, rediscovered opera, and while these things are not impressive, they are MINE. At thirteen I didn't have anything. At thirteen I had what my brother didn't, which was: nothing. My brother was all the things I wasn't. Could do what I couldn't. You get the drift.

And my brother was too good for high school parties. Clyde's sister was throwing a big one. The middle school heard about it through older siblings. There'd always been wistful talk about crashing one (boastful in Cartman's case), but nothing had ever come from it.

Rewind another thirty minutes. 7:45 PM, April 13th. In a month my friends would turn their backs on me and I would join the goths, thinking they understood. In a year I would be bent over in Mole's shower, scrubbing black hair dye from my scalp while I did the only thing I'd held back from Mole: I cried. In an hour Kevin would be dead. But at 7:45 he was yelling at me for nicking his calculator from his backpack.

I was bitter. "Some of us work for a living!" I was angry. At him for being so wonderful and at myself for being so not. "Contrary to what you might believe, you can't just _take_ the things you want. The world doesn't work like that!" But that was the only way I got ANYTHING, and those things were all material. My parent's favor. My sister's admiration. Teacher's recognition - by their own admission my friends didn't even care about me, except maybe Stan. I was like a joke that had gone stale, and if I had any manners at all, I would just fade away quietly.

Kevin left the room to complain to my parents about me. We were having a celebratory dinner for the high score Kevin had gotten on his latest test. Three weeks ago, on my own birthday, I'd hardly been noticed. Kevin was getting a dinner for a number scrawled out on red ink on his paper. I didn't think this was fair. I didn't want to go to dinner celebrating Kevin. I didn't feel like celebrating Kevin.

I remembered the party.

Fast forward ten minutes. I shimmied up the tree in the Donovan's front yard climbed right into Clyde's window. He looked up from his computer and gaped at me. Maybe it looked, to him, like a scene from an aptly named _fairy_ tale. The malnourished blond of his dreams crawling into his bedroom to whisk him out of his sexual confusion and solidify all of the doubts he had about himself. I don't know. I don't, and didn't, give a flying fuck. I grinned at him and said, "Let's get wasted."

Back to the obscene constellations and the back porch now. I was getting drunker. I'd gotten the beers and slipped outside without being detected by the high schoolers. But now I wanted to make my mark on the party. Tomorrow, at school, I wanted something to brag about. I stood in the frozen snow slush. The mud in the treads of my shoe that would attract my scattered attention a half hour later, after my arms but before my brother, stuck into place.

From here until immediately before the crash, my memory is hazy from the three beers I drank in rapid succession. I know what happened because of second hand accounts. I went into the house and did something stupid. What is unclear. The accounts, being second hand, each have their own embellishments. Some say stripping. Some say drunken groping. Knowing me, it was most likely some combination of the two.

Clyde's sister called my brother.

My brother drove over to pick me up. He arrived undamaged. He arrived pissed off.

Kevin dragged me out of the house and manhandled me into the car. He slammed the door. I got muddy footprints on his carpet and thought "Ha, serves you right."

He chewed me out as we drove home. I glared at the clock on the radio (8:40 PM) and didn't look at him. All of the ugly emotions I had, that I blamed on my brother, were rolling around directly below my skin. At least that's what it felt like. I get poetic when I'm drunk, according to Rebecca.

And then (8:44) it boiled over, and I screamed the second-to-last thing I ever said to my brother: "_I HATE you, dickhole!_"

And then, as we rolled toward a stop sign, I uttered the last words my brother heard before he died. "I WISH YOU'D JUST DIE AND FUCK OFF TO HELL!"

We rolled through the intersection.

The other car smashed into us from the left. We spun, we lurched. I got a cut on my head that, in a minute, would cause me to blink blood out of my eye as I lifted my head and surveyed the broken windshield. Kevin got many cuts on his head and a poorly designed steering wheel through the chest.

I was alive and he was dead. Defying everything that made sense in South Park, I walked away from a car crash while the paramedics came for my brother, then the morgue. The only thing I could be counted on to do better than anyone, and my brother had STILL done it when I hadn't.

And that's how Kevin died.

And that's why I will never, ever talk about it.


	24. Tuesday, May 17

I finished the painting. And it really was the best I've ever done. Used forced perspective to make it look like my room is the middle of a cobble street at night - old-fashioned theater to my right; restaurant to my left; and in front of me a long, dark, drizzled-on strip of buildings lit up with vegas-style signs, billboards, and street lamps. It could be any city, anywhere. The point is that it looks like it's a million miles from here.

And then, lying on my bed, I died. Lead poisoning from the paint, I assume. Or something else. Or nothing at all. That's just how it goes.

Since I'd given up on Mormonism, I went to hell.

Since I'd never patched things up with Damien, I went to the layman's hell.

You know how crap happens, and people say "That's life"? I'm starting to think a better saying would be "That's how it works", because it's the same in the AFTERlife. I think God might have seriously designed everything to be as frustrating as possible. Why, I have no idea. Maybe He's just a bitch, like Mole says.

The point remains: even with billions of people in hell, what I'd feared would happen if I left Satan's estate, happened. I'd been there hardly an hour, pushing around a soggy McEgg with a McMuffin in a fast food restaurant while listening to lawyers and accountants babble on about eternal damnation and all that, when someone walked up to my table. A very specific someone. A someone who has been haunting me for the past three years, in memory if not in spirit.

"Kenny," Kevin said.

I stood up quickly. Extremely quickly. So quickly I knocked my McShittymeal right onto the floor. I'd immediately wished I hadn't. It's not like I care about making a mess in hell, but it's hard to convince yourself you're _calm_ when there are too many indicators to the contrary.

I stared at him. He stared at me. And then he said, with a touch of amazement, "You're taller than me."

I was. Am. Kevin was my big brother no longer. We're the same age, now. A few months past our sixteenth birthdays. And after so many years of looking up at Kevin, I was now looking down at him.

It was something that should not have broken me, but still did.

"I..." I... had no idea what I was going to say. Up until that point I'd never even been sure how I was going to feel. If it hadn't been for me, Kevin wouldn't have been at that party. If it hadn't been for the way I attracted death like a drunk celebrity attracted paparazzi, that car wouldn't have smashed into us. If I'd just died instead, everything would have been so much better. For everyone.

"Not for you," Kevin said, and I realized I'd babbled that all out loud, and my face got hot and screwed up and I told him I was sorry.

So sorry.

Oh God.

I'msosorryitshouldhavebeenmeyouwerebetterthanIeverwasandallI'veeverdoneishateyouforit. If ever there was anyone who deserves hell, it's ME. I damned you for caring more about my life than I did. I... I...

Kevin hugged me. And it struck me as so pathetically SAD, not just because of the height difference, or because we had never hugged when we were alive... but because I finally noticed he was wearing the exact same clothes he'd been wearing the night he died. And I finally realized we were both stuck in the three-years-ago, but while Kevin couldn't move on, I WOULDN'T.

"Kenny, Kenny..." he muttered. "Kenny... I was drunk."

Drunk.

"After you left, for the party... I threw a few back with Dad. I didn't stop at the stop sign because I was wasted."

Wasted.

"_I_ fucked up, Kenny. Not anyone else. Not you."

Not _ME_.

"It wasn't your fault. It was mine."

_It was his fault._

I did something incredibly spineless and pussytastic and mockable, and oh my God, it felt better than anything I have _ever_ done in my life.

I cried.

Not alone in a very strange, near-stranger's shower. Right there, into my brother's shoulder, while he stroked my hair and told me _he_ was _sorry_.

... I'm. I. I'm not... _good_ with these sorts of things. I think this journal is more than enough proof that I don't deal with emotions well. Three years of self-loathing and guilt and denial don't go away in a day, even when you spend that day in hell, sobbing into a cotton-blend shirt. But I feel better. Better than useless. Better than a murderer, better than the lowest thing on earth - and it's a start.

I came back in my bedroom. Over the smell of fresh paint, I could smell something cooking. I rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants, and came out to the living room. Mole was there, spread out on the couch, boots thoughtfully hanging over the armrest while he watched black-and-white sitcoms on TV. Bebe was in the kitchen, humming "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" and trying not to break omelets.

I cleared my throat. Mole's feet dropped to the floor and he twisted around to look over the couch. Bebe twirled around to face me, clasping her spatula in a death grip. They both stared at me apprehensively.

Mole cleared his throat first. "You still 'adn't come back to school, so-"

"-we were worried."

I looked from Mole to Bebe, who looked pretty nervous. Can't fault her - I've since made up with Mole, but the last time I saw Bebe I called her some pretty nasty things.

"'Ow _are_ you?" Mole said, giving me a critical once-over.

"Brand new," I said with a touch of humor. Back from the dead and all. "Omelets?"

A very wide smile broke out on Bebe's face. "And toast and orange juice."

"Pulp," Mole corrected. "And waffles, if you aren't sick of zem. Come, watch ze Adams Family while ze womenfolk cooks."

"Oooo, you're getting extra pulp for that," Bebe said, hands on hips, smirking, while I sat on the couch.

"Ze only way eet could be more pulpy is if you gave me an orange."

Mole and Bebe continued to bicker in the joking, goodnatured way you only get from two people who agree on something completely. I'm guessing that something is "take care of Kenny."

Can't say I'd hate that.

While Bebe turned to scoop omelets onto a plate, Mole leaned over and laid a hand on my shoulder. I glanced at him.

"Are you really fine?"

I grinned. "_Finally_ fine."


	25. Saturday, September 5

Damn, I forgot all about this thing. If Bebe hadn't found it while we were cleaning out my closet, I'd have probably never seen it again. Bebe says I come across as a manic depressive when reading it - I've got to admit she has a point.

So. Managed to pass all my classes, between Bebe tutoring me in english, Mole tutoring me in French, and Clyde letting me study all his history notes before the final. Speaking of Clyde, he finally told me what everyone already knew. I panicked and told him I was dating Mole. In retrospect, I probably should have said I was dating Bebe.

Craig finally stopped harassing me - now he's trying to get Bebe to star in some soft core porn. Kyle and Red finally got it on, which you would think would push Stan out of the picture at least a little bit, but he's as attached to Kyle's hip as ever. Gary's as painfully happy as can be and let me know that, whenever I'm ready to join the church, he's there for me. Ugh, I can't put up with the angels' knock-knock jokes and groping. Cartman and Wendy have broken up and gotten back together a dozen times or so. Token is raising chickens for a cock fight in Tweek's backyard, so Tweek is pulling out his hair again. Jason/Dante gave up hitting on Tweek and I've seen with around with Clyde. Little sister gave up her obsession with "Bethannie," as she's now dating Porschea. What else... Damien finally forgave me, so I have to put up with him again. I've seen Kevin around. It's... nice. Still weird, but getting better.

And Bebe's still a prude and Mole's still asexual, and I tell you, I always figured my first threesome would involve more sex. Or any. And they'd be two Filipina chicks in nothing but hats, and it would take place on a... jet, and when we touched down I'd exit the jet to meet a throng of chicks which would proceed to fling panties at me...

What. If you're going to fantasize, might as well make it good.

Re-painted my room. I decided it's the best blank canvas I can hope for, so why not? For a while I had a detailed painting of a turtle getting it from behind from a tiger. Neither Bebe nor Mole appreciated the genius behind this.

That's actually what we're doing today, repainting the room again. Bebe and Mole came over to help move furniture and paint on the white coat. Bebe wouldn't take off her shirt, even after I offered to make her more comfortable by having myself and Mole take off ours. Still a prude. But a prude that makes fantastic omelets.

It was while moving crap out of my closet that Bebe unearthed the journal. There's hardly any room left - I'm on the back of the last page, here. I decided to flip through it while we wait for the first coat to dry.

And now Mole's telling me I'm not going to get away with making him move all the furniture himself just because I might "die of a particularly vindictive splinter" (I thought it was very good excuse, if I don't say so myself) and I have to get off my ass and help him. I'm almost out of paper, anyway.

I'll end with what Bebe said after she flipped through it (with permission, of course. She's less nosy than she used to be, and I'm less vehement about keeping her out - I never imagined getting along with Bebe The Prude Stevens, but now I can't really imagine not getting along with her.):

" 'What the hell can you construct with paper that won't get destroyed?' Jesus, Kenny, that one's easy. Words."

What an utterly gay and chick-like thing to say.

Yeah, yeah, Mole, I'm coming. Jesus, it's just a mattress. What a whiner.


End file.
